Tami’s daughter, Rachel, has established a memorial (blog?) for
Tami’s memory, and please share it as Rachel asked us to do :
www.forevermissed.com/rebecca-tamar-friedman/about
Rachel said that an address to send cards would be her own address :
Rachel Jagodowski
86 Waid Rd
Monson, MA 01057
DE Bob WB5AOH
As so much of the web is so very ephemeral, I have taken the liberty of extracting some information from the memorial linked above :
Rebecca (Tami) Tamar Friedman (nee Whaples), of Austin, Texas, passed away peacefully on Saturday February, 8, 2020 after battling a long illness.
Tami was born 07/17/1951 in Bloomington, IN to Dr. George W. Whaples, PhD and Dr. Miriam Whaples (nee Karpilow), PhD. Tami spent her childhood in Bloomington and Westminster, MD before moving to Amherst, MA with her family. She graduated from Amherst Regional High School in 1968.
She moved to Austin, Texas in 1973 where she graduated from University of Texas’ School of Nursing. She lived and practiced nursing in Texas for a number of years before moving back to Western MA in 1987 where she continued working as a nurse and became interested in the work of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and the GNU project.
In 1990, she moved to Brighton, MA where she worked as a hospice nurse and also worked for the FSF for several years before returning to her beloved home in Austin in the late 1990’s. Tami spent her remaining years staying involved in the FSF community, getting involved in the HAM radio community, cat rescue, and volunteering her time as a nurse to help others.
She was predeceased by her brother, Jonathan Whaples, in 1990, her daughter, Nylah Siddiqi, in 2006, and her nephew, Benjamin Rives, in 2008. Tami is survived by her son, Noah Friedman, and his partner, Carrie Lang, of Seattle, WA; her daughter, Naomi Friedman, and her partner, Matt, of Longmont, CO; her daughter, Rachel Jagodowski, and her husband, Matt, of Monson, MA; her daughter, Esther Friedman, of West Barnstable, MA; her sister, Barbara Rives, of Nantucket, MA; her nephew, Sasha Rives, of Nantucket; and her three granddaughters, Nylah, Analise and Molly Jagodowski.
Tami was very dedicated to her work as a nurse, especially as a hospice nurse. She truly felt that patients who were terminally ill still deserved not only the highest of care but the dignity and humanity that she saw as lacking in much of hospice and elder care. In her honor, please consider making a donation to the Alzheimer’s Association at https://alz.org/ to help advance research of Alzheimer’s and dementia as well as support those who are suffering from those diseases.
