Elliot Friedman

Elliot Kenneth Friedman, who as the director of real estate development at the Massachusetts Port Authority helped launch the transformation of the South Boston waterfront – while raising twin sons as a single father – died on March 27, from kidney failure. He was 86.

Elliot believed in public service and detailed municipal planning, down to the street level. He valued good zoning. He hated geese because they poop in parks. Born in Brooklyn, he became a full Bostonian. He switched from the Giants to the Patriots in the 1990s and died with detailed views on how they should fix their offensive line. He deployed elaborate routes to avoid traffic, like an airport “shortcut” through Everett that probably wasn’t faster. He wouldn’t put Ivy League decals on his car. He chatted up construction workers because he was interested in their jobs.

Even in his final illness, he closely tracked presidential polling, Celtics games, and his grandson’s language acquisition.

Born in 1937, he remembered blackouts in New York during World War II and helping his mother collect fat used to make bombs. He attended James Madison High School, with 8,000 other kids. He graduated at 16. He attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he played end on the lightweight football team, recording one blocked punt and one touchdown.

After college, he joined the Army, serving as a lieutenant. While in the reserves, he expected to be called up during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and asked his mother to iron his uniform. He became a journalist, starting as a crime reporter at the Hartford Courant, where he covered vice and the 1965 race riots in that city. He joined the Boston Globe, working on the rewrite desk, and covering Boston City Hall.

Once, as boy in Brooklyn, walking past a synagogue, Elliot encountered a stranger, who told him, unsolicited: “Don’t trust the goyim.” He disregarded that advice, especially when he met Gail Rotegard, a Radcliffe graduate from Minneapolis, who worked in City Hall. They married in 1974. Identical twin sons arrived in 1978.

After leaving journalism, Elliot worked for the Boston Redevelopment Authority, first as a spokesman and later in planning. He went to night school at Northeastern, earning a Masters in Public Administration. He later joined Massport, where he oversaw the redevelopment of waterfront properties, including the Fish Pier and Commonwealth Pier. He helped turn land that cost the state money into tax revenue-generating buildings. Those projects were early steps in the redevelopment of South Boston waterfront, where a convention center, hotels, and restaurants have replaced parking lots and warehouses.

Improving lives through thoughtful city planning was Elliot’s life’s work and understated passion. After retiring, he used his spare time to better the communities he lived in. He served as an expert volunteer on various Watertown planning committees. He was also a longtime supporter and board member of Pine Street Inn in Boston, which works to help the homeless.

When Elliot shopped for a new home in 2007, his sons feared that his meticulous approach would annoy his realtor, Margie Kern. Instead, they became close. She introduced him to her best friend, Paula Kaplan, whom he married in 2017, when he was 80. They drove cross-country, travelled to France and Israel, spent summers in Rye, N.H., and brought each other happiness.

Elliot’s first wife died of cancer in 1984. He curtailed his work to raise his sons, then five, as a single dad. He arranged cones in an empty field and directed his sons do soccer drills from a book he bought. He consistently arrived early to pick them up from practices. He adjudicated arcane disputes and broke up fights. When his sons wanted to race each other, he made them run separately, and timed them. Then he claimed, every time, “you tied.” They don’t build statues for that, but he earned one.

He is survived by his wife, Paula Kaplan, sons Ben and Dan, daughters-in-law Selma and Margot Sanger-Katz, and grandson Oskar.

A memorial service Monday will be held at Temple Sinai at 50 Sewall Ave in Brookline at 1 p.m., with a burial to follow at Mt. Auburn Cemetery. The family will be sitting shiva at their residence in Watertown on Monday following the burial until 8 p.m., Tuesday and Wednesday, 4 p.m.-8 p.m. In lieu of flowers, we request donations in his honor to Pine Street Inn