Funeral services were held Friday in Brook line for Alexander Brin, editor and publishes of the Jewish Advocate of Boston, who died Wednesday after a lengthy illness at the age of 87.
Brought to this country from Russia by his widowed mother at the age of 11, Brin went to work as a newsboy to help bring over his sister, Sarah and his younger brother, Joseph. Winner of an essay contest sponsored by Mayor John Fitzgerald, grand father of President Kennedy, he was given a job as office boy on the Boston Herald and within three years be come a staff reporter.
A dramatic series of articles by him on the Leo Frank case in Georgia attracted the attention of Louis Brandeis, then a Boston attorney, who asked Brin, then 21, to become editor of the Advocate, succeeding Jacob de Haas, a former secretary to Theodor Herzl.
While editor of the Advocate, he served longer on the Massachusetts Board of Education — 39 years — than any other member. He was the first Jew to become chairman.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
