Larry Bohn '74
Established by Larry Bohn ’74 in memory of his father, the Abraham Bohn Scholarship for children of veterans provides financial support to enable children of veterans to complete their undergraduate degrees at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Abraham Bohn was a World War II airman who was shot down over Romania and spent 18 months in a POW camp. He returned to the United States with lifelong ailments and passed away when his children were still in their teens.
Larry and his sister Rhonda were only able to attend UMass Amherst because of veterans’ benefits. Larry recognized that now there are many children of veterans who cannot afford college even if they are eligible for VA benefits. Grateful for his own college degree, Larry established this fund to give more students the benefits he and his sister had.
Now a managing director of the venture capital firm General Catalyst Partners where he is involved with companies that transform a range of industries, Larry took an unusual path to become a venture capitalist. He delivered groceries, drove a taxi, worked on a farm, was a short-order cook, and managed a pool hall before getting a BA in English from UMass Amherst and an MA in English from Clark University. He taught composition and literature at a junior college before parlaying a college class in Fortran and his writing skills into a job at Data General, launching his career in software. He built three leading business software companies, taking two of them through their IPOs as CEO.
Larry is a woodworker and an avid cyclist who has been a rider in the Pan-Mass Challenge for almost 20 years raising funds for the Dana-Farber Cancer Center. He notes that he is a proud father of two grown children and “not a perfect husband married to a near perfect wife.”
In recognition of the doors opened by his college degree and the quality of faculty he encountered, Larry has long wanted a way to give back to UMass Amherst, where he particularly remembers Sydney Kaplan and Mason Lowance and his senior honors thesis on W. B. Yeats.