Biography:

     June Glory Biber Freeman died Thursday, July 4, 2024 in Scottsdale, Arizona, after spending a lifetime in Little Rock and Pine Bluff, Arkansas, where she raised a family and became a champion for art and architecture and a force for positive change. She was six days shy of her 96^th birthday and had retained her quick wit and optimism until the end. 

     A non-observant Jew born and raised in Newark, New Jersey, June was an outsider--and often felt like one--in the predominantly Southern Baptist towns in which she and her husband, Pine Bluff native Edmond Wroe Freeman, III, settled. But it’s best to “bloom where you’re planted,” as she often said. With pluck, imagination, and a rare gift for connecting people, she built lifelong friendships and became a grassroots organizer for many new community ventures and institutions. 

     Born on July 10, 1928, June was the first of four children of Irving and Hilda Biber. She graduated from Weequahic High School in Newark in 1945. In 1949 she earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Chicago and then spent two years working toward a doctoral degree in Chicago’s clinical psychology program--and met Edmond. After marrying in 1950, the couple moved to Pine Bluff, where Edmond worked at the Pine Bluff Commercial newspaper. She and Edmond moved to Little Rock in 1995. Following his death in 2021, June moved into an assisted living facility in Scottsdale to be near her daughter, Gretchen Freeman, who, along with her husband, Alan Silverman, devoted themselves to her care.

     In the early 1960s, June led the successful effort to repurpose an old Pine Bluff fire station into an art center known as the Little Firehouse Community Arts Center. This vibrant facility grew to become the Southeast Arkansas Arts and Science Center, the predecessor of the Arts & Science Center for Southeast Arkansas. From 1975 to 1980, she worked as director of state services for the Arkansas Arts Center in Little Rock, where she transformed a large van into a mobile art gallery that brought art to residents of small towns and rural areas. She started the Arkansas Art Council’s Arkansas Artist Registry to help artists promote their work and earned a certificate in arts administration from Harvard University.

     In later years, June focused on design and architecture. She became a connoisseur of bridges, perhaps fitting for someone so eager to make connections. To share her passion with others, she founded and served as director of the Architecture and Design Network, a nonprofit organization that offers free and open-to-the public lectures by renowned architects. After she stepped down in 2016, the network’s board named the series the June Freeman Lecture Series in her honor.

     A lifelong admirer of Japanese design, art, and culture, June in 1986 founded the Pine Bluff chapter of the Sister Cities International organization. She led several local delegations to--and welcomed delegations from--Pine Bluff’s sister city, Iwai City (now called Bando), near Tokyo. She traveled extensively in Japan along with her husband and their adult children and established lasting friendships with many people there. In 2005, at the age of 77, she hiked to the 12,000-foot summit of Mount Fuji.

     June, or Juje as she was known to family members, was quietly but extraordinarily generous, using her time and resources to support many charitable causes and to purchase paintings, drawings, and sculpture from young artists whom she met and took under her wing. She was known for mailing toys, sweaters, and tins of home-baked brownies and chocolate chip cookies to loved ones. The items always arrived undamaged because of the exquisite care she took in packaging and sealing the boxes.

     June was also an ardent conversation partner, eager to share her knowledge and sometimes controversial views on art, religion, politics--just about any topic, really--and to listen avidly to others. Well-informed and intellectually curious, she was also outspoken, eager to call out intolerance or ineptitude even when doing so was sure to cause offense. She spoke in favor of civil rights during the Jim Crow era and joined the Women’s Emergency Committee to Open Our Schools, which supported the integration of Central High School and other Little Rock public schools. Later she protested the erection of creches on public property, which she saw as a violation of the separation of church and state. June was willing to have foes as well as friends. 

     June served as a member of the board of several institutions, including the Arkansas Arts Council, the Governor’s Commission on the Status of Women, the Arkansas Arts Center (now the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts), the Arts & Science Center of Southeast Arkansas, the Mid-America Arts Alliance, and the Pine Bluff Orchestra and was a lifetime distinguished member of the UAMS Psychiatric Institute Advisory Board. She received numerous accolades and awards during her lifetime, including the Award of Merit from the Arkansas Chapter of the American Institute of Architects in 2013, and was a two-time recipient of the Governor’s Arts Award, once for Outstanding Patron in 1985 and again for Lifetime Achievement in 2018. She was inducted into the Arkansas Women’s Hall of Fame in 2017.

     Though she and Edmond often canoed and camped out on the Buffalo River and other streams in the Ozarks, June was at best a reluctant outdoorswoman. But she loved growing plants and was comfortable around all kinds of creatures. Over the years she and her children kept not only dogs, cats, and parakeets but also rodents, hawks, lizards, spiders, and snakes (including venomous species), and even the occasional possum. She often joked that her memoir would be entitled “And an Alligator in the Bathtub”--not much of an exaggeration, as she let one of her sons use a tub in her Pine Bluff home to corral an alligator-like reptile known as a caiman. The residence, which June designed with an eye toward fostering joy and imagination in her children, also featured a secret room and a firepole linking the first and second floors.

     June loved to dance. She also loved to ride her bike and to walk, especially during trips to New York and Chicago, two of her favorite places to visit. When her advancing age made walking outside difficult, she took to her treadmill and logged many miles while listening to educational tapes. 

      In addition to her sister Barbara Brous, June is survived by four children and their spouses: Andrew Freeman and his wife, Joyce Freeman, of Frisco, Texas; Gretchen and Alan of Phoenix; David Freeman and his wife, Ellen Kunes, of Salisbury, Connecticut; and Eric Freeman and his wife, Rachel Miller, of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California; six grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. 

     In addition to Edmond, June was predeceased by a sister, Carol Biber, a brother, Michael Biber, and Geneva Byrd, who worked for the Freeman family for more than 40 years. 

     Memorial plans are pending. 

     Donations in June’s memory can be made to the June Biber Freeman Endowed Lectures in Architecture at the University of Arkansas. Checks should be made out to the University of Arkansas Foundation and mailed to the university’s Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design, 120 Vol Walker Hall, Fayetteville, AR 72701. Attn: Mary Purvis. Online donations with a credit card may be made here [link to University of Arkansas | Online Giving | Donate (uark.edu)] (please note in the comments section that the donation is in memory of June Freeman).