After fighting world war, he promoted world peace

In 1971, Alan Kahn attended the World Conference on World Peace Through the Rule of Law in Belgrade, Yugoslavia.

In 1973, he attended a similar meeting in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, organized like the 1971 meeting by the World Jurist Association, a nongovernmental organization.

But in 1943, Mr. Kahn had graduated a year early from the University of Pennsylvania because, his daughter Marcia Kaminker said he had told her, "our greatest fear was that the war would end before we could get to it."

When "he was involved in the peace movement" all those years later, she said, "that was an interesting contrast."

On May 23, Mr. Kahn, 86, a retired transportation lawyer, died of lupus at Abington Memorial Hospital. He had lived since 1998 at Foulkeways at Gwynedd, a retirement community near Lansdale.

Born in West Philadelphia, Mr. Kahn graduated in 1940 from West Philadelphia High School, where he lettered in gymnastics, and earned his bachelor's degree from the Wharton School in 1943.

His interest in fitness didn't end with his school days, his daughter said.

From his mid-40s to his late 50s, she said, he worked out regularly on the parallel bars at Penn's Hutchinson Gym and in 1990-91 was chair of the Delaware Valley Chapter of the Appalachian Mountain Club.

A 1948 graduate of Harvard Law School, Mr. Kahn began his career at the Philadelphia firm Richter, Lord & Lafarge.

In 1958, he cofounded Winokur & Kahn, a predecessor of the Philadelphia firm Abrahams, Loewenstein & Bushman. He retired from Rubin, Quinn, Moss & Patterson in 1991.

Long after his World War II service in the Navy, his daughter said, he kept at home a metal scrap of the Japanese kamikaze plane that hit his destroyer off Okinawa in 1945, with no loss of Americans.

Mr. Kahn was a member of the World Federalist Association and Common Cause and, his daughter said, was a Democratic committeeman in Lower Gwynedd from 1990 to 1997.

While living in East Oak Lane, he was president of the Oak Lane Civic Association in the 1960s and was president of the men's club at Reform Congregation Keneseth Israel in Elkins Park from 1963 to 1965.

In retirement, Mr. Kahn volunteered from 1987 until 1992 with Community Legal Services. And from 1993 to 1998 he did pro bono legal work and distributed food to the homeless for Project HOME in Philadelphia.

Mr. Kahn was president of the Foulkeways Residents' Association in 2004 and last year founded the Residents' Council of Gwynedd House, the skilled-nursing facility there, where he was president until his death.

Besides his daughter Marcia, Mr. Kahn is survived by his wife, Norma; son James; another daughter, Emily Kahn-Freedman; a brother; and seven grandchildren.

Services took place May 26.