Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 23, 1995 TAG: 9504250028
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
``She died peacefully in her sleep,'' said her personal assistant, Sue Leary, who could not say which of Kuhn's many ailments, from arthritis to osteoporosis, had caused her death.
For all her ailments, none had slowed her down. She spent the past 25 years leading people young and old in the fight against age discrimination and other forms of what she saw as social injustice and stereotypical thinking. Just two weeks ago she had joined striking transit workers on their picket line.
Even so, there was some evidence that Kuhn knew the end was coming. Although she had made it her goal to live until her 90th birthday, in August, she had allowed her friends and admirers to celebrate it April 1.
It was fitting for a woman who was often ahead of her time.
It was in 1970 that Kuhn, who had worked 25 years for the United Presbyterian Church in New York, commuting daily from her home in Philadelphia, reached the mandatory retirement age of 65 and was forced to leave her job.
``They gave me a sewing machine,'' she once recalled, ``but I never opened it. I was too busy.''
Within months of her retirement she joined several friends in founding an organization quickly dubbed the Gray Panthers, a name derived from the radical Black Panthers.
Despite the name and the initial emphasis on championing the elderly, as conceived by Kuhn the organization knew no age boundaries. Its credo described it simply as an advocate for ``fundamental social change that would eliminate injustice, discrimination and oppression in our present society.''
For example, in addition to seeking a ban on mandatory retirement, which was eventually enacted into law, the group called for ``publicly owned and democratically controlled'' utilities.
No one who knew Kuhn was surprised that in last year's health care debate her organization championed what was widely seen as the most radical of the various proposals: single-payer health insurance - a position that had been on the Gray Panthers' official agenda since 1977.
A tiny woman who wore her hair in a prim bun that gave her the look of an ideal candidate to be helped across the street by a Boy Scout, Kuhn, who detested the term ``senior citizen,'' made no apologies for her looks or her age.
``I'm an old woman,'' she told The New York Times in 1972. ``I have gray hair, many wrinkles and arthritis in both hands. And I celebrate my freedom from bureaucratic restraints that once held me.''
Kuhn, whose opposition to the war in Vietnam made her a hero to many young protesters, had a disarming argument in recruiting younger people to her cause: ``Everyone of us is growing old.''
Kuhn was a champion of social causes long before the Gray Panthers.
As a student at Flora Stone Mather College of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Kuhn helped organize a college chapter of the League of Women Voters.
And in a succession of jobs as a manager of social programs for the Young Women's Christian Association in Cleveland, Philadelphia and Boston and in similar work with the Presbyterian Church in New York, Kuhn took what were then unconventional positions on issues like peace and social justice.
Kuhn, who could also be somewhat unconventional in her private life, attributed the fact that she had never married to ``sheer luck.''
According to her book, she had many love affairs, including one in her 70s with a student in his 20s. Kuhn did not identify him, but Christina Long, who helped her with the book, said the man, now in his 40s, was at the recent birthday gala. ``He seemed very proud of the romance,'' she said.
Kuhn leaves no immediate survivors.
by CNB