Dana Adkins

Dana Adkins Pan, 77, died at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City on July 22, 2024, after complications from a fall and head injury precipitated by Ehrlichiosis, a deer tick disease. Adkins Pan was a well-known editor who worked many years in major publishing houses and later as a partner at Adkins & Phillips Literary Agency.

Adkins Pan was born June 30, 1947, in Akron, Ohio, to the late Travis Blair Adkins and Mae Burke Adkins. She is survived by her husband Robert O. Pan of New York City and Poughquag, N.Y.; a twin sister Dinah Adkins of Portland, Ore.; and sister-in-law Pauline M. Pan of Ann Arbor, Mich. She will be missed by many friends, cousins, and work colleagues.

Adkins Pan graduated from Revere High School in West Richfield, Ohio, in 1965, and from Miami University of Ohio, in Oxford, where she studied American literature and classics, in 1969. After attending the Radcliffe Publishing Procedures Course at Radcliffe College, Adkins Pan began her career in Boston, Mass., and later moved to New York City, where she was an editor at The Viking Press, and senior staff editor at Reader’s Digest in New York City and Pleasantville, N.Y. 

Dana Adkins was the beloved wife of Robert Pan; the couple were married in New York City on Sept. 10, 1983. The Pans had no children. They spent many years in the city and at a country home in Poughquag, as well as travelling abroad and in the United States. Adkins Pan was a frequent visitor to museums, the opera, theater, and musical venues.

Her friends described her as a terrific editor, and as a kind, gentle, and generous person who loved books, the arts, people, and her pets. The latter most recently included a smooth collie Phoebe, a Havanese Anna, and two cats, a Tonkinese called Tonky, and an abandoned black cat, Inky, that she enticed in from the woods in winter.

In addition to being survived by her husband, sister, sister-in-law, and many cousins, Adkins Pan is survived by a close second cousin, Naomi Burke, recently of Citrus Heights, Calif., and now of Atlanta, Ga. The family wishes to recognize the loving help of Alfredo Santana who visited her frequently in the hospital and generously provided assistance, and a group of friends who kept Dana in their prayers, hoped for her recovery, and stayed in constant touch with the family during her illness. These include Bruce Trachtenberg of New York City, Barbara Burge of New York City and Millerton, N.Y; Beth Tondreau of New York City and Tarrytown, N.Y; Nancy Mills of Scottsville, Va.; and Maureen M. Kilroy of Akron, Ohio.

A memorial service will be announced for October.



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