The late Dr. Michael Groll was a 1956 Cheltenham High School graduate and a prominent fertility specialist.

Groll was born in 1939 in Czechoslovakia. His parents emigrated to the United States the next year to avoid the Nazis. His family moved from New York to Cheltenham when he was 13 years old.

According to local historian Chuck Langerman, Dr. Groll was a brilliant honor roll student with a photographic memory during his Cheltenham days. He went on to Princeton University where he majored in chemistry and pre-med, then to Penn Medical School for his residency in obstetrics and gynecology at Abington Hospital, as well as a fellowship in reproductive endocrinology at Thomas Jefferson University.

Dr. Groll started a private practice in gynecologic endocrinology at Abington Hospital where he helped as many as 1,000 women with fertility problems become pregnant during his 15-year career. He was widely acknowledged as one of the leading specialists in fertility in the United States.

Dr. Groll was shot and killed on January 1, 1986, by one of two burglars in his Rydal home. He was 46 years old.

As the news spread across the country, the Los Angeles Times wrote:

Groll and his wife, Mary, had decided to have a quiet New Year’s Eve–no parties, no noisemakers. They took two of their three children to an early showing of the movie “A Chorus Line” and were home by 10:30 p.m. By midnight, the lights were out and the family was asleep.

An hour and a half later, the 46-year-old fertility specialist was dead.

Two weeks later, two Philadelphia men were arrested and charged with Groll’s murder. Christopher Briggman, 24, and David Steward, 26, have been held without bail pending a trial scheduled for June 2.

A clip from the Philadelphia Daily News’ coverage can be found below:

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