Kathryn Kobrin, Wife of Columnist, Dies at 65

SAN CLEMENTE —  Kathryn (Kitty) Elizabeth Kobrin, a former co-owner of a newspaper and wife of a columnist for the Newport Beach/Costa Mesa Pilot, died Wednesday of respiratory and heart failure.

Mrs. Kobrin, who would have turned 66 today, will be remembered in a 1 p.m. service today at the Balboa Bay Club in Newport Beach, said her husband, Jerry Kobrin, 70.

She was a native of Reading, Pa., where she and her husband founded the Berks County Record, a weekly newspaper, in 1956. They sold the paper 12 years later when they moved to Beverly Hills.

Jerry Kobrin joined the Orange County Register as a columnist in 1979 and the family moved to San Clemente a year later.

Born Kathryn Elizabeth Thornton Sembower, she was a member of the Junior League and Daughters of the American Revolution.

She died at 4:12 a.m. at South Coast Medical Center in South Laguna, where weeks before she had undergone radiation treatment for a cancerous tumor.

Kobrin said friends usually threw his wife a party on her birthday so they have organized a joyous memorial service, which will include a Dixieland band and a barbershop quartet.

“They knew she’d rather celebrate life than mourn a death so they’re going to turn this into a celebration,” he said.

Kathryn Kobrin will be buried in her hometown next to her twin sister, Coralou Marx, who died nine years ago.

She also is survived by her son, Jeffrey, 29, and a sister, Patricia Bush of Naples, Fla.