Collectible figurine creator

Eugene Freedman, 82, the creator of the Precious Moments collectible figurines, died Feb. 19 at a hospital on Maui, Hawaii, where he had a second home.

The cause was a sudden escalation of chronic lymphocytic leukemia, his son, Richard, told the Chicago Tribune.

Freedman, a longtime resident of Milwaukee and Glencoe, Ill., was the founding chairman and former president and chief executive of Enesco Group, a global gift and collectibles company based in Itasca, Ill.

While at Enesco, he recognized that Samuel J. Butcher’s two-dimensional art of teardrop-eyed children on inspirational greeting cards could become a success when rendered as porcelain figurines.

The figurines quickly became popular with fans who joined Precious Moments collectors clubs with more than 100,000 members worldwide.

Born in Philadelphia in 1925, Freedman moved with his family to Milwaukee, where he grew up.

He attended Northwestern University and Caltech and served in the U.S. Navy during World War II.

In the late 1940s he became a salesman for a Milwaukee-based gift and novelty company.

He later opened his own manufacturing and distribution company, which became Freedman-Mathews Corp.

In 1958 he resigned to become one of the founders of Enesco.

Freedman retired in 2005 but consulted for small gift companies until his death.

An active philanthropist, Freedman was a major donor to the Easter Seals and Boys & Girls Clubs of America.

Sidney Beckerman, a film producer whose credits included “Marathon Man” (1976) and “Kelly’s Heroes” (1970), died of cancer Wednesday in Los Angeles, his family announced. He was 87.

Raymond Kane, a Hawaiian slack key guitar master who received a National Heritage Fellowship Award from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1987, died Wednesday after being hospitalized for three months in Honolulu with respiratory problems. He was 82.