The masthead of the Daily Register, where Kamin was the president and editor for two decades. (Click to enlarge)

By JOHN T. WARD

Arthur Z. Kamin, a longtime Fair Haven resident who guided the now-defunct Daily and Sunday Register newspaper for two decades, died Tuesday, according to a report by the Associated Press. He was 84 years old.

Kamin’s son, Blair, a Pulitzer-prize winning architecture critic at the Chicago Tribune, told the AP that his father died in Red Bank from Parkinson’s disease and progressive supranuclear palsy, a rare neurological disorder.

Art Kamin was editor of the  Register from 1965 to the mid-1980s, the AP reported. He also was a former president of the New Jersey Press Association and a retired member of the American Society of Newspaper editors. He also served on Rutgers University board of trustees from 1971 to 1993 and was its chairman from 1982 to 1985.

According to an oral history interview conducted by Flora Higgins in 2000 under the auspices of the Monmouth County Library, Kamin was born in South River, where he covered news and sports for the weekly South River Spokesman before attending Rutgers College in New Brunswick, where he became editor of the the Targum, the campus newspaper. He graduated in 1954.

After a two-year stint in the Army at Fort Monmouth, he was hired as a reporter at the Red Bank Register in 1958, and became its editor seven years later.

In the Higgins interview, Kamin said the Register during his tenure had championed the creation of the Shrewsbury branch of the Monmouth County Library, and the creation of Brookdale Community College.

Kamin left the Register, which had moved to Shrewsbury, in 1989.

Kamin is survived by his wife of 60 years, the former Ginny Palew; his son, Blair Kamin; and a daughter, Brooke Kamin Rapaport.

Funeral arrangements are being handled by the John E. Day Funeral Home in Red Bank.

Here’s a complete obituary, written by Blair Kamin.