Leon “Lee” Cohn, news reporter and editor, dies at 82

Leon “Lee” Cohn passed away on March 19, 2012, at the Washington Home’s hospice from complications due to Lymphoma. His family, including his three children, was by his side. Lee’s passion for journalism became evident as early as grade school, when he and his friend produced a school newspaper, and never ebbed. He was a distinguished editor of his high school paper and of the Syracuse Daily Orange and upon college graduation became the one-man editorial staff for West Virginia’s weekly, the Clarksburg News. His career took root as a reporter for Congressional Quarterly and for the Washington bureau of the Wall Street Journal and as editor of Reporting on Governments and associate editor of the Kiplinger Washington Letter, his last job, which he held for 12 years before retiring in 1992. By far his favorite job, though, was reporter and news analyst on the national staff of the Washington Star, where he covered the economy from 1957-1979.
He thrived on the energy of the newsroom and the comradery of the staff and took pleasure in translating complex economic and political concepts into layperson terms—but always thoroughly and accurately. As a retiree, he continued in that vein, submitting letters to the editor and writing the occasional article. Lee was active throughout his retirement, becoming an avid theater-goer, trying his hand at creative writing, and traveling. His last trip abroad in May 2011 was to Paris and Tuscany, a trip that he shared with his daughter and that he approached with zeal—even climbing to the top of Notre Dame. His wife of 51 years, Mary W. Cohn, whom he cared for faithfully and lovingly through many years of Alzheimer’s, died in 2010.


Washingtonpost.com notice - Published: March 30 — Adam Bernstein
Leon ‘Lee’ Cohn, journalist
 Leon “Lee” Cohn, 82, an economics correspondent for the old Washington Star who then was an associate editor covering economics news for the Kiplinger Washington Letter, died March 19 at the Washington Home hospice. He had complications from lymphoma. The death was confirmed by his daughter, Elizabeth “Betsy” Cohn. Mr. Cohn worked for the Star from 1957 to 1979 while also serving much of the time as Washington editor for Sylvia Porter’s financial newsletter Reporting on Governments. At Kiplinger from 1980 to 1992, he was known as a reliable and dogged investigator on the arcana of budget legislation. Leon Maurice Cohn was a New York native and a 1950 journalism and political science graduate of Syracuse University, where he was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa honor society. After Army service in the Korean War, he was a reporter at Congressional Quarterly and covered agriculture for the Wall Street Journal’s Washington bureau. He did volunteer work at St. Ann’s Infant and Maternity Home in Hyattsville and as a reading tutor at Shepherd Elementary School in Washington. He was a District resident. His wife of 51 years, Mary Wilson Cohn, died in 1991. Their daughter Nancy Cohn died in 1991.