Opening Doors to Humanity: A Celebration of Don Kahn

“It gives me an opportunity to allow my mind to open up and see the world slightly differently from the way that someone else might see the world … through art.… These are beautiful open doors to look at and experience.“

— Donald Kahn

Don and Jackie Kahn joined the ARTZ Philadelphia community in 2017, referred by a social worker who thought they would enjoy the engagement and community provided by our programs. Little did the social worker know just how quickly and deeply the Kahns would become integrated into the ARTZ community, and how they would change the lives of everyone with whom they came into contact, always for the better. Don was a retired cardiologist who had recently been diagnosed with dementia. Jackie was also a healthcare provider – she had trained as a nurse — and ultimately became not only Don’s soulmate, but his right hand as she managed his office through the years of his practice.

Don would often reflect that he had always loved art but had never had time to study it or to full appreciate it until he delved into it with us in the galleries of the museums where our programs took place. While the Kahns had first met through their mutual love of music during high school (they were both in the band, Jackie playing the flute and Don, the trombone), it was only in Don’s retirement that they discovered a deep connection through visual art as well. Both were extraordinarily observant and insightful. Don’s color blindness – which became the stuff of legend at ARTZ Philly programs – often enhanced his ability to take note of details that others might miss, opening the door to deeper and more intriguing conversations. He not only loved the art, he loved the repartee and sense of camaraderie with other participants. And they all loved, admired, and laughed with him. Don brightened every program with his impish humor and his huge capacity for compassion.

In 2018, Don and Jackie became mentors in our ARTZ @ Jefferson program. For seven years – only missing a semester here and there – they brought their professional and personal experience, wisdom, and generosity into their students’ lives. The students who were mentored by both Don and Jackie reveled in his irrepressible sense of humor and were moved by his profound belief in the power of empathy to change patients’ and practitioners’ lives. Jackie became the keeper of their life stories as Don’s memory became less reliable, but certain stories were always Don’s to tell, and the strength and resilience of their lifelong love for each other was evident in every session with their students and their fellow mentors.

Steven Bieser, a medical student at Thomas Jefferson University (and now a practicing neurologist) was mentored by Don and Jackie in 2022 and wrote this about Don’s impact on him personally and professionally:

“Don is so clearly [in] his soul a healer, and someone who uses his life experience and vernacular to teach, and I love seeing him light up when he has a point to make and to emphasize or respond to somebody else’s comments, … always so insightful. I will forever smile thinking of Don reminding me to incorporate the crucial importance of empathy and humanity in medicine. I’m so honored and so lucky that I get to keep strings of memory from Jackie and Don with me for the rest of my life. Additionally these strings of knowledge expand as I will share the lessons I’ve learned with my peers and with the students that I train someday and with my own kids, and it’s just each one of us lives on. Don will be with me forever. And he will be with all those people who I teach forever.”

Don recorded these thoughts in 2018, his inaugural year as a mentor, about what the experience meant to him:

“The value of this mentorship is very personal.  It’s privileged passage into the life of ‘me’.  It’s a teaching opportunity to ‘confess’ who I am and what I was.  It forces me to accept the reality of what I can’t control and reveal this change in myself so that a student can experience firsthand what I’m going through as an individual with early cognitive decline, and how it affects those close to me.

Students entering the allied fields of healthcare do so with or without the experience of living with an individual who has dementia, or who is undergoing some cognitive dysfunction.  Mentoring with real subjects is an honest way to appreciate the realities of patient/caregiver experiences and their effect on lives.  There’s an opportunity to appreciate challenges and how they are internalized by both parties and translated into the reality of daily existence.

In these exchanges there is opportunity to appreciate the need for compassion, empathy and the importance of being supportive; essentials that should never be lost in any professional relationship in providing healthcare.

Patients with dementia are not responsible for their behavior, or lack of behavior.  It’s a perfect opportunity to learn that aging takes on many forms including dementia in its multitude of presentations.  What is of paramount importance is that a patient with dementia is an individual who should be encouraged to be as productive mentally, physically and socially as possible so as to maintain their dignity as a human being.”                      

Signed: Donald L. Kahn, M.D. (October 2018)

Don passed away at home the evening of February 21, 2026. All of us in the ARTZ Philadelphia community who were infused with Don’s light and heart and compassion by sharing space with him are profoundly grateful and – as Don’s student Steven put it – Don will be with us forever.