Anne Kantor died peacefully on the evening of October 20th, surrounded by family and music. She was 99 and three quarters. Anne was born Annette Irene Blackman on January 23rd, 1927, in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, to Helen (née Sachs) Blackman and Edward Blackman.

She was the eldest of three children. Anne was reading by the age of three and continued to excel in school, graduating Eastern District High at 16. She intermittently attended City College, but started working as a writer for Junior Miss Magazine in New York City. A mentor at the magazine encouraged Anne to follow her dream to chronicle war-torn Europe and go abroad. In 1946, Anne took a boat with only a bicycle and saddlebags as luggage and cycled through France and as far east as the Czech Republic.

She interviewed "the person on the street,” eventually filing her stories as a freelance writer for Look Magazine. A year later, Anne returned to New York, and took a job with Stan Lee Comics, becoming the first female editor and writer at his early comic empire. As her reputation as a writer grew, she was offered a job at Grossinger's in the Catskills. She spent the next two years there writing for their magazine, interviewing the many comics and celebrities that passed through the Borscht Belt in the early 1950s.

Anne was interviewing Al Rosen, the third baseman for the Cleveland Indians, when she met Seth Kantor in the elevator of the Empire State Building. Four months later, the two married, much to the relief of Anne's mother, who thought her daughter, at 25, would never marry. Along with its founder, George Levitan, Anne and Seth Kantor both wrote for Sepia Magazine, based in Fort Worth, Texas. This chronicled achievements of Black Americans in the segregated South. Throughout Anne's life, she stood up for the rights of others and was deeply empathetic to social injustices.

Anne followed Seth's career to Washington, D.C. in 1960 as he became a White House correspondent for Scripps Howard newspapers. She continued her own writing career in various forms over the coming decades, including her self-run Anne Kantor Advertising Agency. She wrote both print and radio ads throughout the 70s and 80s, for local businesses such as Lowen's Toy Store and Decorator Center. Her career ended at the age of 85 after being an editor at the American Association for Clinical Chemist Journal for over 20 years. Anne played tennis into her early 90s and was an avid reader nearly up until her death. She completed the New York Times crossword puzzle weekly. Anne was best known for her kind heart and how much family meant to her. She was the anchor of two generations of her family and opened her home always to friends.

She is survived by her two daughters, Susan (Gary) Bank of Chevy Chase and Dr. Amy Kantor of Brooklyn, New York. There are five grandsons, Andrew, Caleb, Maarten, Noah, and Pip, aka the “grandboys5”, whom she adored, five nephews, and six great-grandchildren.

A funeral service will be held at 10am, on Sunday, October 25th, in the Chapel at Judean Memorial Gardens -Olney, MD.

Donations in her honor can kindly be made to the ACLU and Planned Parenthood. Services entrusted to Sagel Bloomfield Danzansky Goldberg Funeral Care.