Bob Leslie, Freedom Theatre co-founder

BOB LESLIE once was described as the glue that held the Freedom Theatre together.

Over the years he led the fight to keep the theater, on Broad Street at Master, in North Philadelphia, on its feet as it went through difficult financial times, his family said.

Leslie joined lifelong friend John E. Allen in the founding of the theater, designed to reflect the African-American experience through plays, dance and the vocal arts, and to reach out especially to young people.

"Freedom Theatre would not have endured and prospered if Bob Leslie had not been in the wings, quietly and diligently gluing the operation together as general manager," former Daily News columnist Chuck Stone and his wife, Louise Davis Stone, wrote in 1991.

Their daughter, Krishna, studied acting at the theater in a program that Leslie started to train young actors, dancers and vocalists, the Stones said in the column.

"To be young, gifted and independent is one of Freedom Theatre's most important messages for young blacks," the Stones wrote.

Robert E. Leslie, a former circulation employee for the old Philadelphia Bulletin who left to work for the theater full time in 1968, died yesterday of a heart attack. He was 76 and lived in Southwest Philadelphia.

He retired from day-to-day operations of the theater in 1996 but remained on the board of directors and had served as chairman, said his daughter Gail Leslie, now director of operations for the theater and a prolific playwright who is lead writer for the anti-violence play "Journey of a Gun" being performed at the theater this month and next.

"Through many tough times when others might have wavered, Bob fought indefatigably for the theater to pull through," the theater said in a statement.

Allen formed the theater in 1966, and Leslie joined him two years later, Gail Leslie said.

"We started out in the basement of the Heritage House and eventually were able to purchase the building and renovate it," Gail Leslie said.

That proved costly and - with Bob Leslie's help - the theater had to fight for funds to stay afloat, Gail Leslie said. She said that Freedom has "almost retired the debt, with his help, even after he retired from the theater."

Brian Anthony Wilson, Erika Alexander, Gary Dourdan, Johnny Hobbs Jr. and Millicent Sparks are among the thousands of Philadelphians who began their careers in the New Freedom Performing Arts Training Program founded by Leslie, said Patricia Scott Hobbs, current director of the program.

"Our beloved father, grandfather and great-grandfather Robert E. Leslie was a generous and enthusiastic man who involved his family in all his activities," the family said in a statement. "Although not all of us are artists, the arts have informed and enriched everything we do. He was a strong, decisive and determined man with high expectations of those he loved."

Leslie also coached baseball and basketball at Haddington Homes and sold Christmas trees to get money to buy uniforms.

Besides Gail, Leslie is survived by daughters Diane Leslie, who also works at the theater, and Verna Leslie; sons Gerald Leslie and Robert E. Leslie Jr.; a stepdaughter, Valerie D. Allen; eight grandchildren, one great-grandchild and a sister, Ruth Richardson.

Funeral arrangements were incomplete.