Alexander B. (Sandy) Brook died at his home in Newcastle, Maine on Monday, January 23 of a heart attack. He would have been 90 on June 20.
Sandy was born in Woodstock, N.Y. in 1922. He worked in Maine during summer vacations from Choate and Yale. In 1942 he left Yale, before his senior year, to join the Navy in September, 1942. He was a carrier-based navy fighter pilot in World War II.
After being discharged on November 1945, he returned to graduate from Yale with an English major in 1946.
Between short jobs, such as lumberjack and wrangler, in Maine and elsewhere, he wrote his first novel, and in 1949 signed on as an assistant to a jute buyer in India and Pakistan for a trade association of American Mills. He was promoted many times during these years, and became Assistant to the President of the New York Stock Exchange — conglomerate-company in New York and Cuban Holdings.
But his heart was in Maine. In 1958 with his wife Anneke and three small children he returned to Maine and bought a moribund weekly newspaper, the “Kennebunk Star” and print-shop in Kennebunk. During his 20 years with the newspaper he wrote some 2,000 editorials and personal columns, among them as the seasons moved him, the 53 pieces in his collection of essays, “I Begin Through the Grass — A Maine Journal.”
The late Isabel Lewando, long time ‘Star’ photographer and reporter, wrote: “Brook’s newspaper, which was a provincial weekly, had changed little more than its name, during its eighty-year history. After Brook took over it grew from a four-page – one-town chat-sheet, to a sixty and eighty-page regional news and opinion journal that defied description. Its readership included more different sorts of folks than would seem to fit into one locale. Brook, by instinct, knew them all and wrote for each as much as he wrote for himself.” Lewando continued, “poet, prophet, pamphleteer by nature, his own man as well as his own boss, he wrote his heart out.”
In the 1960’s and 70’s Sandy’s newspaper became a highly celebrated Maine institution — the “York County Coast Star”. Later the ‘Star’ was the recipient and four-time winner of the prestigious Harvard Neiman Fellows award for “best weekly in the nation”.
Brook published two novels, “Ragged Meadow” and “Smiler with a Knife”, and six books of essays. “The Hard Way”, Brook’s “Odyssey of a Weekly Newspaper Editor” received positive reviews in a hundred and thirty-three reviews in a hundred and thirty three publications, including:
The “Washington Post: “Easily one of the best books ever written about journalism.”
The “New Your Times: Important reading for anyone concerned with journalism. It challenges assumptions and passionately argues for a commitment to newspapering as a way to influence community life.”
The “L.A. Times: An almost mythically perfect tale”
“The Hard Way” also brought kudos from U.S. Senator William S. Cohen, and Edmund S. Muskie among many others.
In his last years Sandy called Newcastle, Maine home, which he shared with his wife Kelly Patton Brook and seven animals. This became a time of writing another novel and compiling the essays he wrote for the Star which fill five volumes. He now had the time to read which was only a luxury during his days at the newspaper. He was avid reader of the classical poets and newspapers and news magazines.
Sandy is survived by his wife, Kelly Patton Brook, of Newcastle, Me. three children, Megan Brook of Cambridge Ma , Lisbet Brook, of Brentwood, Ca. Eben Brook of Kennebunk, Me. and three grandchildren.
At the Animal House in Damariscotta, Maine there will be a memorial donation box in memory of Sandy Brook’s life. The proceeds will go to The Lincoln County Animal Shelter.
A celebration of Brook’s remarkable life we be held at his home in Sheepscot in early June.
Condolences and messages for the family, may be expressed by visiting: www.StrongHancock.com