Leo Kahn (entrepreneur)

Early life Kahn was born in Medford, Massachusetts, as the younger of two brothers. Kahn graduated from Malden High School in Malden, Massachusetts. Kahn received a bachelor's degree from Harvard University in 1938. The company initially opened small groceries, but then expanded to supermarkets. The Purity Supreme company also included Heartland Foods, which was called "the first successful deep-discount warehouse supermarket in the country" by Inc Magazine. One of Kahn's biggest rivals was Thomas G. Stemberg, the owner of a competing New England supermarket chain called First National Supermarkets. At one point, Kahn and Stemberg engaged in a price war over the lower price for Thanksgiving turkeys. Kahn sold Purity Supreme to the Supermarkets General Corporation in 1984 for $80 million. Through the transaction, Kahn became the chairman of Supermarket General. Privately, Kahn regretted selling Purity, saying he missed the interaction with his employees. == Personal life ==

Kahn married Dorothy Davidson. After 11 years of marriage, Dorothy died in 1975. He later married Emily Gantt, who survived him. From his first marriage, Kahn had a daughter, Elizabeth, and two sons, Daniel and Joseph. Joseph Kahn is a journalist and the executive editor of The New York Times. His stepdaughters were Lisa and Xandria Birk. Kahn had eight grandchildren and three step grandchildren. Leo Kahn was on the board of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America. == Death ==

Kahn died at the Springhouse care facility in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston from a series of strokes on May 11, 2011, at the age of 94. ==References==