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.