Obituary of Martha Nemes Fried June 12, 2026

Martha Nemes Fried
July 8, 1923 – April 30, 2026

After almost 103 years, a long and full life, Martha passed in peace. She leaves behind a daughter, Nancy Fried Foster (Robert J. Foster), a son, Elman Steven Fried, and two grandsons, Andrew Morton Foster and Gregory Robert Foster.

Martha was born in Budapest, Hungary, and spent her first 16 years among family and friends, going to school, writing poetry, and learning how she might eventually take over her father’s furniture business. Her father died when she was in her early teens, and she and her mother fled Hungary for the United States on the eve of World War II.

Martha and her mother arrived in New York City nearly penniless and stayed in a series of furnished rooms, working their way up to a small apartment on West 72nd St. In 1945, Martha moved to California to marry her GI husband, Morton H. Fried. When the war was over, they returned together to New York, but only briefly before going to live in China, in 1947-49, while Morton did anthropological fieldwork in Anhui Province. Martha worked for the China Relief Mission, living first in Shanghai and then in Nanking. She learned Chinese and immersed herself in China’s cosmopolitan culture of that era.

In subsequent travels, Martha lived in Guyana (then British Guiana) and Taipei, Taiwan, and traveled widely in Asia and Europe. She continued to write poetry but later turned to short stories, which she published in innovative online magazines. She was such a good cook that people would skip meals before coming to dinner so they had plenty of room for her homemade delicacies. She published a cookbook, Gourmet Meals for Easy Entertaining, with illustrations by her husband, and briefly ran a cooking school.

Martha became the president of her local Democratic Club, in Leonia, NJ, when the town was firmly Republican. Within a few years, there was a Democratic mayor and council. She also started the town’s recycling program. Later, she became the deputy clerk of the New Jersey State Assembly.

Her later years were spent in Rochester, NY, where Martha took enormous pleasure in watching her grandsons grow up. They were her delight. Many are the meals we all had together, the holidays we celebrated, the trips we took to the Finger Lakes and Niagara on the Lake. We will always remember her wit, her irreverence, her ice cream, her high heeled shoes and impeccable outfits. She was the life of the party and we will miss her.