Colyumist Kahn

In the eight years since he organized his first professional dance orchestra at the age of 15, Roger Wolff (Wolfe) Kahn, youngest son of Banker Otto Hermann Kahn, has spent much time in doing things unexpected of young sons of rich men (TIME, Sept. 19, 1927). Last month he undertook a role apparently as strange as his others, but easily explainable. The role: aviation colyumist for the Newark Free Press. The explanation: Roger Kahn is an able flyer. And Publisher John Barry Ryan Jr., joint founder of the new Free Press (TIME, July 14) is his brother-in-law, husband of the former Margaret Dorothy Kahn.

Writing once a week, Colyumist Kahn devoted his first column to a defense of Colonel Lindbergh against the current press vogue of baiting him; his next, to debunking of the endurance flight stunt. His third column was a potpourri of impressions beginning, "Understand that sanitary conditions [at Newark Airport] are to be improved and that provision is being made for the comfort and convenience of air-voyagers." Last week came an impassioned if unoriginal protest against the newspaper practice of playing up airplane crashes while auto and rail accidents are treated casually.

Colyumist Kahn writes with the authority of 2,700 hours flight, including considerable test and night flying. In demonstrating the Cabot Aerial Pickup device to postoffice officials at Mitchel Field last summer, he made 99 successful pickups in 100 trials. He has five planes in his own ("Roweka") hangar at Roosevelt Field, L. I.; a Vought Corsair, a Bellanca Pacemaker, an Ireland amphibian, a Fleet, a hybrid Standard with a Sikorsky wing.

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