He taught HS journalism and AP English and was the sponsor for the school newspaper. He quit being a working news reporter over ethical issues like being pressured to steal a photo of a deceased person if the grieving family declined to provide it. Gene also was heavily involved with the California Scholarship Federation, the ACLU and Amnesty International.
Gene would take some of us on unofficial field trips, like one I remember from L.A. down to the Shakespeare Festival in San Diego, and another to Beverly Hills to hear Ray Bradbury speak after a showing of a film based on Bradbury's short stories (and to have hot fudge sundaes at the old Brown Derby afterward).
At the end of each semester, Gene threw a party at his house for the school newspaper staff. The highlight of the party was Gene and the student editor doing a hilarious script written by Gene, with the editor as "Mr. Friedman" and Gene taking the parts of various student reporters as they explained why their news story was late or responded to Gene's corrections to their stories.
Gene stayed in touch with many of his former students, and he and I would get together for dinner occasionally over the years and decades. There must have been at least 200 of us former students at Gene's 80th birthday party--which he threw for himself by hiring a harbor cruise ship out of Newport Beach and taking us all on a dinner cruise--at his expense. He asked that we not bring birthday presents, but we were permitted to contribute essays about our school memories...and there were a LOT of essays. We lost Gene just a few years later.
He was a great teacher and a great human being. R.I.P., Gene. 
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