Nurse Anne Cohn dies at 96

Anne Cohn, who died on February 14 at the age of 96, spent most of her adult life in Riverdale and was an active participant in community life.

She could often be found walking her English sheep dog, Brownie, near her Grosvenor Avenue home, acting as den mother to a Pack 204 Cub Scout troop, chaperoning a teen dance at the Riverdale Temple or Horace Mann School or in her kitchen baking her beloved pecan pies.

Her recipe was published in The Riverdale Press and the newspaper got so many calls for it that it was reprinted annually in the cooking column written by her close friend, Celia Stein.

Her son Robert recalls that she began her pie making on her family’s farm in Hemphill, Texas, where she used nuts grown in an allée of trees along the entrance to the property. It was a farm devoid of modern conveniences, far from the nearest city and without electricity or running water. Pulling the plow was the job of the family mule.

She graduated from St. Mary’s School of Nursing in San Antonio, Texas and made her way to New York City where she began her career at Brooklyn Hospital in 1939, becoming head nurse of the surgical ward.

With war imminent, Ms. Cohn joined the military, becoming a Navy nurse in 1940. It was a fortuitous decision. At the Brooklyn Naval Hospital where she was stationed, she met a handsome Army doctor named Herman Cohn.

They were married in 1942 and moved to a rented house in Riverdale in 1950, eventually settling in Fieldston.

Dr. Cohn formed a family practice of general medicine in Kingsbridge with Dr. David Zehner where Ms. Cohn occasionally filled in as a nurse between stints at a number of New York City public schools including P.S. 7, P.S. 24 and then Junior High School 141.

Her husband was a loyal member of the Riverdale Kiwanis Club, which, like many service clubs, began as a male-only institution. When the gender barrier finally came down in the 1980s, Ms. Cohn was among the first women to join.

She spent the last ten years of her life at the Sunrise Assisted Living facility in Paramus, N.J., where she died.

She is survived by her sons, Robert, of Ridgewood, N.J. and David, of Berkeley, Ca. and their wives and her three grandchildren, Anneleise, Beatrice and Chloe.

Funeral services were private.