Necrology
Mark Elliott Kahn '70
Aug. 10, 1949-Aug. 5, 2021
Mark Elliott Kahn ’70 died on Aug. 5, 2021, in Haworth, N.J., where he had resided for much of his adult life. He was born on Aug. 10, 1949, in Mineola, N.Y., and raised in New York City. He came to Hamilton from Louis Brandeis High School, then located on New York’s Upper West Side, having earlier attended Riverdale Country School. He majored in English, graduating with cum laude honors, and was a member of Theta Delta Chi fraternity. His older brother, Kenneth Kahn ’63, had preceded him to Hamilton.
Following his graduation, Mark enrolled at Albany Medical College, earned his M.D. degree in 1974, and did his surgical residency at Beth Israel Medical Center, where, in 1978, he was awarded the Leon Ginsberg Prize for Outstanding Surgical Resident. He then completed a postdoctoral fellowship in vascular surgery at Englewood Hospital and Medical Center and joined the practice of Englewood Surgical Associates, which would be his professional home for 35 years. He and Brenda Connelly were married in 1985 and had four sons.
Away from the office, Mark continued with a range of enthusiastic hobbies for which his friends on the Hill remember him: coaching baseball, basketball, and soccer in Haworth, where he was head of the Haworth Soccer League for many years. He took up telemark skiing and snowboarding (he would acquire a second home in Colorado in pursuit of those sports) and windsurfing off the New Jersey shore. His patients and friends recalled his fondness for quality clothes, usually set off with something from his collection of bow ties, and his patients remembered a caring and accomplished surgeon, one who, when appropriate, discouraged them from having surgery.
Although he was a fairly regular attendee at five- and 10-year reunions for his class, it was at his 40th reunion, in 2010, that he would conceive of the initiative that would define his legacy at Hamilton. Walking across the quad that spring, he later said, he wondered why there wasn’t some flexible seating to entice students to gather and converse under the mature trees and expansive lawns. It seemed to Mark a natural addition to the campus. The idea germinated for two years, and in 2012, he began an outreach to the administration for permission to sponsor some Adirondack chairs. At first, he deemed it a personal gift, perhaps one done jointly with his brother Ken — “6, or 8, or 10, max 12” chairs — but he apparently underestimated his own leadership and sales chops. Once he started communicating with friends, the idea spread organically, and when he’d sourced a good-quality teak model, in the spring of 2013 there were more than 60 chairs awaiting assembly. A group of mostly graying donors, armed with power tools, descended on the Hill to finish the job.
“I hope this is going to change the nature and face of the campus in a small and definite, positive way,” Kahn told those gathered at a dedication ceremony the following day. “I was inspired by a campus that had almost everything that you could possibly imagine, including beauty, but not a comfortable place to sit down with friends, or study and read, or rest.”
Mark's efforts were recognized by the Alumni Council with a College Key Award presented to him in 2015.
Thereafter Mark made regular trips to Hamilton from Haworth in his beloved Jeep, usually with the top down, regardless of the weather forecast, and always accompanied by his black Labrador named Friday. He’d track down all the chairs he could find — some inevitably migrated into dorm rooms and lounges; a few simply disappeared — and tightened bolts and made minor repairs, and then reported on the status of the chairs before taking Friday on what he described as “a promised hike” through the Root Glen. A later effort to introduce bicycles to the campus was less successful; the College had cautioned him that previous bicycle efforts ran into the reality that bikes generally go readily downhill and rarely back up. The law of gravity remained in place for the 19 bikes Mark’s effort realized.
Mark E. Kahn is survived by his wife, their four sons, two grandchildren, and his brother, Kenneth Kahn ’63.
