Jerry Fischbein was all about serving people. He started during his 50 years in advertising and continued into retirement when he joined a group of retired executives who offered free counsel to small businesses.

His most far-reaching effort came in 1981 after he had visited a friend at Methodist Hospital in St. Louis Park who could no longer speak. Nurses told him how difficult it was to communicate with people who couldn't talk after suffering strokes or being injured in accidents. Fischbein had an idea and worked with artists at Fischbein Advertising to create plastic boards with words, letters and pictures. Patients could point to the symbols or letters to spell out words so others could understand them, said his daughter Carol Berg.

Thousands of the communication boards have been produced and sold through the nonprofit service agency Sertoma, said Gary Paradise, who worked with Fischbein in a local Sertoma chapter. Fischbein died Oct. 6 in an assisted living center in St. Louis Park from a fall and resulting brain injury, Berg said. He was 94.

Fischbein also was president of Adath Jeshurun Synagogue in the early 1970s. He was a Big Brother for about 15 years and later served on the organization's board of what is now Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Greater Twin Cities.

Berg said her father spent many hours assembling the three-board communication sets, and packing and mailing them to hospitals and nursing homes. "He dedicated his life to helping others," she said. "He made friends everywhere."

Among those he helped were Betsy and Mike Halvorson, who had a graphic design business that floundered after Mike, a U.S. Army reserve commander, was sent to Iraq for a year in 1991. He had hired a man to run his business who turned out to be an alcoholic.

Betsy Halvorson said she fired him and contacted the nonprofit Service Corps of Retired Executives, or SCORE. The federally funded volunteer program sent Fischbein. He helped keep the firm afloat until her husband returned home.

"Mr. Fischbein taught me how to present a portfolio," Betsy Halvorson said. "He pushed me to make calls to my clients and try to keep the business going.

"He taught me to call clients and to tell them they had to pay their bills. With him at your side, you can pick up the phone and say what he told you to say.

"He was wonderful," she said. "He had a philosophy that you should use your life to make other people's lives better."

Fischbein's other main focus was his family. Berg said he spent every Saturday with his two daughters, and later his grandkids. Saturdays with grandpa were "the highlight of my week growing up," said Justin Berg, a University of Pennsylvania graduate student.

"Every place he walked into he made friends," Justin Berg said. "That is what it was really about to him: about friendships and relationships."

Fischbein also is survived by his wife of 69 years, Bernice, and brother, Irv, both of St. Louis Park; daughter Ricki Herling of Chicago, and five grandchildren. Services have been held.