Honoring
Patricia Kant

Patricia Leen Kant passed away on June 1, 2025, at the age of 92. Pat was born Patricia Leen on October 31,1932 — the second daughter of Johanna (Devlin) Leen and Chester Leen — at West Point, New York, where her father was serving in the United States Army.

Born at the nadir of the Great Depression, Pat grew up in Brooklyn with her sister Bobbie. During the 1930s, Chester served in the military and in the New Deal’s CCC and WPA programs, while Johanna was primarily a homemaker. In the war years, both Chester and Johanna worked in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where Johanna was a crane operator.

Pat attended Saint Catherine’s of Alexandria and then Prospect Park High School. It was during high school that she met Harold Greenberg, who would become her first husband. After high school, Pat began her studies at Brooklyn College.

Pat and Harold had three children – Bill, David, and Robert – but their marriage ended in divorce in the late 1950s. Through the early 1960s, she persevered as a single mother, working hard to raise her young children as a waitress and switchboard operator. In 1966, she met Horst Kant, a German émigré and amusement park entrepreneur, and they married in 1967. Son Eric was born in 1969. Horst went on to a long career as an amusement park manager and entrepreneur in Coney Island while Pat raised the children and planned her next chapter.

Once her children were grown, Pat returned to college to complete her bachelor’s degree and then a master’s degree in social work at New York University. After completing her studies, she began her career as a social worker at the New York City Board of Education where she took special pride in her work with adolescents.

Among her many friends and family, Pat was known for the strength of her personal and political commitments, as well as for the directness with which she expressed them. Pat eagerly embraced her reputation as someone who “tells it like it is,” and she delighted in being provocative. But her defiant attitude was more than a mere persona; it reflected a strength of character and independence that was rare in women of her generation.

Upon retirement, Pat and Horst re-located to Key Largo Florida where they developed new friendships and entertained visitors from afar.

Following Horst’s death in 2014, Pat continued to live in the Florida Keys for several years, before returning to New York in 2017. Upon her return to New York, she took great pleasure in seeing her grandchildren reach adulthood and begin to raise families of their own, taking special interest in her growing number of great-grandchildren.

Pat is survived by her four sons, William Oedegeest (Nancy), David Greenberg, Robert Greenberg (Andrea), and Eric Kant (Maria), as well as by six grandchildren (Christopher, Julia, Simon, Emily, Kevin, and Justin) and four great-grandchildren (Joseph, Otis, Chloe, and Duncan).