"There is nothing more pleasant than cruising on a boat with the whole family."
Letter from Empress Catherine the Great

Monday, October 29, 2012

Donnie Cahn, Rest In Peace


Donnie Kahn died last week at 87, from the cancer that had attacked her body. She was a member of the Harlem Yacht Club for 40 years and though I met her when I joined, 22 years ago, I didn’t get to know her until 2006 when I retired and joined the “Club Within The Club” (See Blog, 7/26/12), of which she was a charter member. 

Donnie was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia and escaped when the Nazis were invading. She continued to sail her boat, a lovely and well built and very well maintained Bristol 36’, “Dido,” after her husband died, before I joined the Harlem, and up to and including 2011, after which her illness sapped her strength this summer. 

I attended her funeral service on Manhattan’s upper west side, her burial in Mt. Carmel Cemetery near the Brooklyn-Queens border, a Shiva call in her apartment overlooking the Hudson River and a small informal dinner in her memory at the Harlem. She was always cheerful and always game. She will be missed.

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