Steven Kohn

Steve Kohn died suddenly on December 30, 2010 after an accidental fall in his Portland, Oregon house. He was 64.
Steve requested that any donations in his name to be given to UNC Hospice, a nonprofit organization whose mission he held in the very highest regard. Their address is: UNC HOSPICE, P. O. Box 1077, Pittsboro, NC 27312. Their phone No.: 919.542.5545.
There will be a memorial gathering on Sunday, February 13th from 2:00 – 4:00 PM at Steve’s and, his partner, John Thompson’s home in Chapel Hill to remember and celebrate Steve’s rich, caring and inspirational life. The gathering will be informal where anyone who feels like sharing a Steve memory can do so—just listening is fine also. The house is located between Chapel Hill and Hillsborough: 5809 Cascade Drive, Chapel Hill, NC 27514. Everyone who attends will be welcomed.
Steve was born in rural Duluth, Minnesota. After a childhood encounter with polio he went on to graduate from high school as class president as well as valedictorian. He graduated from St. Olaf College before leaving Minnesota to spend two life-altering years as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Thailand where he was a teacher at a secondary school.
The American military presence in Vietnam stood at more than half a million personnel when Steve returned to the US. Local draft boards were proceeding inexorably down their lists of eligible draftees. Steve applied for and was granted the classification of conscientious objector. He performed his alternative military service first in rural Pennsylvania as a house parent in the dormitory of a boarding school for emotionally disturbed adolescent boys. As some parents never visited their sons, Steve, typically, tried to be whatever each needed until the reality of spending every minute of every day and every night with a group of severely disturbed adolescents began to unhinge him. On his days off he would leave the school and check into a cheap motel to do nothing but watch TV from morning to night. After 12 months he could not take the strain any longer, and he gave notice. At the time he was in his early twenties.
New York City was close so Steve headed there to find another eligible position. He liked AFS (American Friends Service), a cultural and scholastic exchange program between American and international high school students. When he notified his selective service board of the job switch, they did not appreciate that he left his first assignment without consulting with them. Consequently, the Board had him restart his 2-year alternative service from the beginning.
After completing 2 years at AFS, Steve stayed in New York City a little longer. During the day he taught English as a Second Language and in his free time he devoured the artistic New York of music, dance, theater and museums.
By 1975 Steve and John, partners for two years, wanted a rest from the buzz of NYC. They moved to Chapel Hill and naively opened a small shop, Fool on the Hill, on Henderson Street. Initially, they only planned to sell art postcards and note cards but the space was a former apartment still divided into 4 rooms. To fill the space, they wrote to aid organizations throughout Africa and Asia to find deserving craft coops that would send them unusual craft items. The results were mixed: wooden Kenyan bowls for containing menstrual blood did not fly out the door, but people did buy rattan clothes hampers from the Philippines. In those days with international travel cheaper and more casual than it is today, Steve and John bought PanAm around-the-world tickets allowing them to stop wherever they wanted as long as their route continued to move forward. They travelled for many months, visiting many places and sending back many things.
The Fool later moved to a larger space in University Square and changed its name to T’boli. The increased space allowed the eclectic mix of products to expand until a critical mass was reached. T’boli remained a Chapel Hill destination for more than 20 years. In the early 1990’s, Steve and John sold the store to devote more time to a wholesale business they started called Homefront. People in Chapel Hill may remember the popular yard sales at Homefront’s Hillsborough warehouse.
Homefront enabled Steve to collaborate with talented artisans and designers principally in India and Thailand. In addition, he began to create his own designs, a process he found personally fulfilling. Steve was amused when his designs proved popular in the marketplace, but he also wisely copyrighted them —but that is another story.
Steve cherished his personal relationships with the designers and artisans and his customers and these friendships deepened over time. Because Steve and John usually stayed in the homes of the people they worked with, it was not unusual to find themselves sitting in on matchmaking plans, or wedding plans, or watching the children grow from primary school students to college graduates. Steve visited his Indian and Thai friends frequently over a course of 25 years. He loved this way of working.
Once Homefront was launched, Steve spent a lot of his time on the road. He exhibited at 6 to 8 wholesale trade fairs annually, always those in New York, Atlanta, and San Francisco, but others too - especially if there was something else close by that was of interest to him such as Lopez Island near Seattle or Santa Barbara near Los Angeles. About his international travel, Steve often said that the only reason he did any of this work was the lure of a bowl of noodles from his favorite Thai street vendors.
Steve retired in 2007 to devote his full attention to his twin passions of painting and volunteer work for UNC Hospice. He approached his hospice work wanting to learn everything he could about death and dying. He later said he thought that the most valuable awareness he gained was the importance of always doing one’s best to live in the present.
Throughout his adult life, Steve was an avid recreational cyclist who enjoyed the back roads of NC as well as those of France on many vacations.
He also enjoyed the physicality of moving large stones from one pile to another, eventually creating a dry stonewall or a set of stairs. Occasionally he had neighborhood kids create their own personal time capsules to put in the middle of a wall. Steve wanted his ashes scattered over the structures that he built—and they have been.
At the time of his death, Steve was happy and excited to be preparing for a new adventure. He and John were planning to move to Portland, Oregon, where they had bought a house. The move was to have been completed this coming spring. Steve was looking forward to driving less, walking, hiking and cycling more and further exploring a city where he had discovered a Thai restaurant that he considered to serve the best northern Thai food outside of Thailand.
Steve leaves behind his partner of 37 years, John Thompson, and two brothers, Brian Kohn and Leon Kohn, both of Duluth, Minnesota. In addition to his family, Steve leaves friends all over the world who will remember his artistic gifts, love of life and acts of kindness.