Film
captures one man's team spirit
By Carl Schoettler
Baltimore
Sun
Originally published April 28, 2005
Memories
seem to hang like motes in the sunlight of Peter Kohn's bright and airy new
apartment at
Pictures of his mother, Hylda Gutman Kohn, are everywhere. Kohn emphasizes the
"Y" when he spells her name.
"I'm very attached to her memory," he says. "She sacrificed her
life nearly to my brother and I. We needed so much
help."
Both boys were considered what would now be called "developmentally challenged."
Kohn describes long struggles through a plethora of boarding schools. He says
he left many "not successful." He was an ungainly youth who couldn't
swing a bat well or even run very well when he tried track.
Kohn is 73 now and the subject of a new documentary film, Keeper of the Kohn,
which plays tonight at The Senator Theatre at 7:30. Directed by David Gaynes, the cinema-verite film documents Kohn's last official
season with the lacrosse team at
Kohn's life began sorting itself out nearly 25 years ago on the athletic field
at Middlebury when he started passing out towels and water as field manager for
the school's lacrosse team.
"It was just before my 50th birthday when I went to Middlebury," Kohn
says. "I suddenly discovered that I wasn't fighting the world
anymore," he says. "I realized I had found my place. We all hope to
be where we're comfortable, people care about us, love
us."
He was at last a part of a team.
The title refers to the team member who kept an eye on Kohn, gave him rides, generally
looked after him.
When shooting for the documentary began, Kohn had been the lacrosse team manager
for years and was much beloved at Middlebury.
The film shows him in his standard pre-game pep talk, which ends in the traditional
chant:
"What time is it, Pete?"
"Time to beat Williams!"
Or
In his farewell before his last game with Middlebury, he sends the team out to
play with what might be his motto: "Let your character and dedication stand
out brilliantly." Then tears well up and he says, "I'm so proud of
you guys. I'm so proud to be part of this team."
Kohn, now officially retired, became known throughout the lacrosse world for his
unquenchable team spirit. Last year, his devotion to the game was recognized
when he became one of the few people who never played the game to be inducted
into the Lacrosse
Hall of Fame at the
"Part of the film is not to ask the question what's wrong with
Peter," says Gaynes, the 27-year-old director of Keeper of the Kohn,
"but to ask the question of what's right with Peter."
Kohn has grave blue eyes. And he looks more youthful in person than he does in
the film as he reflects on his life. He's the grandson of one of the founders
of Hochschild Kohn, the old line department store long gone from the northwest
corner of Howard and
His mother never gave up on him or his brother, Benno, he says. "Only because
of her dedication [did we have] a chance to become useful, valuable people to
ourselves and the world," he says. "Though it took
many, many years."
In the photographs and an oil portrait from a half-century ago, Hylda Kohn is
the beautiful, stylish woman who occasionally acted at the old Vagabond and
Hilltop theater companies. Kohn remembers her especially in Dark of the Moon, a
folksy drama of 1920s
Department-store style portraits of him and Benno, by a painter named Albert Schwartz,
flank a cabinet at one end of his living room. He's a sweet-looking boy holding
a toy train. He still loves trains and train travel. He's on a train in the
opening of Keeper of the Kohn.
Gaynes was introduced to Kohn by Jim Grube, the coach who brought Kohn to Middlebury.
Gaynes, a former TV news reporter, does different things in "nonfiction
visual media" to put food on the table and pay the rent, including some
journalism and corporate-video stuff. The documentary began as a part-time
project.
"I was producing a video for Jim's company," he says from his
He left coaching lacrosse when his wife, Jane M. O'Brien, became president of
Gaynes tracked Kohn to
"Then I thought this story was much, much bigger than just a sports piece,
and I need to follow it over a period of time," Gaynes says. "She was
OK with me documenting their relationship. I thought the story could really, really
speak to some of the ideas I wanted to communicate in my work. The ideas of how we cope with changes in life and how real people
wrestle with real issues."
Although the film has lots of lacrosse game and locker room sequences, Gaynes
also probes the deep, bonding relationships Kohn forges with Crilly and Jerry
Schmidt, a Hall of Fame lacrosse player at
Kohn met Crilly in
"What happens in the film," Gaynes says, "and what happened in
real life as well is that Peter really ends up taking care of her."
Kohn met Schmidt at
"He was such a faithful friend," he says. "He did everything for
me. He put me forward every way he could."
Schmidt, who won acclaim as a player and a coach, was the only lacrosse player
to ever appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated, in April 1962. He died a few
months before Kohn was inducted into the Hall of Fame.
"His effort in the end got me in," Kohn says. "I don't make it a
big issue. But it is a very nice thing. ... I try to be modest about it. I
don't ever want to be big-headed. I just want to be myself. And that's the way
it should be."