David Kohnhorst

KOHNHORST DAVID, 1916-2008, passed away. He was born at 310 E. College St. David was a bat boy and played pepper with Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig when the Yankees played an exhibition game at old Parkway Field. He was a gag writer for Dinah Shore, Alan Young, Frank Sinatra and Jimmy Durante. A gag he wrote for Durante's radio show sent the studio audience into hysterics: (Durante calls up Garry Moore, his straight man, and says he's been robbed and has his hands tied behind his back. "But, Jimmy, if they tied your hands behind your back how were you able to dial me?" Durante says, "They don't call me 'The Schnoz' for nothin'!") David believed he also made millions laugh with the thousands of cartoon gags he wrote, one of which appeared as a full-page New Yorker cartoon of an alien climbing down a boy's kite string. A prolific writer, and early champion of civil rights, David had scores of left-leaning letters to the editor published in five different decades. Survivors: his son Keith (Lisa): daughter, Janice (Paul) and two grandkids, Ben, 10, and Tessa, 6, live in Northern California. He is also survived by his sister, Ernestine Schaff, 93, and brother, Robert Kohnhorst, 97, and was preceded by brother, Maurice Kohnhorst, all of Louisville. He was beloved by many nieces and nephews.