Balfoura Levine

Balfoura Friend Levine, also known as Bo, was born in 1925 in Shanghai, China, Her father, Jacob Friend, was a Russian Jew recruited into the Russian Army under Czar Nicolas II and fled to China during the Russian Revolution. Ten years later, he went back to Russia to bring his fiancée, Frieda, to China as well. They lived in Hongkew which was a ghetto for thousands of European refugees who fled to China. Jacob was a scholar who started the salmon smoking industry in Shanghai. Bo attended the British Public School then attended St. Johns University in Shanghai. She emigrated to the United States through San Francisco, California, in 1947 then moved to where an uncle was living in Eastman, Georgia. She attended the University of Georgia and received her degree in Journalism in 1950. She was first married in 1953 and raised three children, Sandy, Ronnie and Laurie. She has outlived three husbands and well into her 90s is a columnist for The Jewish Georgian.