On Sunday, local historian Chuck Langerman shared two former Olympians who graduated from Cheltenham High School: Donald Cohan (above left) and Charles Horter (above middle), both of whom teamed up with John Marshall to win a bronze medal in Yachting at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany.

Today the Philadelphia Inquirer published an article about the trio’s experience at the “darkest Olympics”, as the author put it.

According to the story, eight members of Black September, a radical pro-Palestinian organization, scaled the walls of the Olympic Village on September 5, 1972, and fatally shot two members of the Israeli team, taking another nine hostage. A botched rescue attempt left all nine hostages and five of their abductors dead.

The article continues:

Still in Kiel on Sept. 6, unaware of the massacre because he hadn’t bought a newspaper that morning, Cohan traveled back to Munich to meet his wife, Trina, who had flown in for a visit and was staying a mile outside the Olympic village. The sun setting as he walked back to the complex, his vision obscured by the crepuscular sky, he reached a six-foot-high chain link fence that encircled the village. As Cohan scaled and jumped over the fence, two German soldiers — one with a shotgun, one with a pistol — pointed their weapons at him, and two German shepherds barked at his feet.

Cohan threw up his hands and sputtered out what broken German he could: “Ich bin ein athlet.” I am an athlete.

The soldiers let Cohan go, and he went on to become the first Jewish athlete to win an Olympic medal in sailing, the Inquirer said.

At the conclusion of the Games, Israeli sailors gave Cohan a satin, blue-and-white triangular flag with the words “Sports Federation of Israel, XXth Olympiad Munich 1972” stitched across it that had flown from their boat.

Cohan passed away in 2018, and the flag still hangs in a family member’s home, the Inquirer said.

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Photo: Courtesy of Susannah Cohan McQuillan via the Inquirer