May 1, 2015

Ann Kahn

Ann Kahn was born in Dallas in 1941 and spent her early childhood in South Dallas on Parker Street, in a home she recalls set against the deep segregation of the era. Around the age of seven her family moved to University Park, following the wider migration of the Jewish community toward the Park Cities. She was the oldest of three children, with two younger brothers. Her father managed a grocery store for an uncle, and food ran through the family: her grandfather kept a grocery store in the front of his house, and relatives were connected to Goodman produce and to baking. Her grandparents immigrated from Russia and Lithuania in the early 1900s, one arriving through Galveston, and their stories of strength and passage stayed with her.

Ann attended Highland Park High School, where she worked on the school newspaper and, decades later, grew close again to classmates over lunches. She recalled the anti-Semitism of the time in muted forms but said she enjoyed high school. After a year at SMU she married her first husband, Fred, and moved to College Station, where she worked to help put him through his last two years of school. Their marriage lasted 28 years. The couple later lived in Connecticut, where Fred worked for his father's company, before returning to Dallas in 1974 when his job situation shifted. There they took the leap into business, buying an existing air conditioning company.

Ann and Fred built their air conditioning and heating business, later doing government work under a minority-status designation and operating for some 40 years. She served twice as president of the Dallas air conditioning contractors, in 1985 and 2005, and said she never let herself feel diminished as a woman in the trade. She taught a Jewish cooking class to children at Temple Emanuel, was active in Hadassah, and served as president of Dallas Hebrew Free Loan, for which she established an endowment. She also gives through the Greater Dallas Jewish Foundation and drives for Meals on Wheels, crediting her generosity to her mother. Later married to Denny, whom she has known 40 years, Ann described her present life as her happiest, full of peace, travel, and gratitude.

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