By Bill Simons
As a Jew growing up in early 20th-century Romania, young Hermann Glickman experienced antisemitism at the state school he attended. Blessed with speed afoot, he competed in the signature event of the gymnasium field day, the 100-yard dash. He won the event, but was denied proper reward. The medal, related Hermann, “they gave it to the mayor’s son. Me, they gave two pennies.” That story is related in Jeffrey Gurock’s observant biography of Hermann’s son, “Marty Glickman: The Life of an American Jewish Sports Legend.” Seeking a better life, 18-year-old Herrmann emigrated from Romania to America, arriving alone at Ellis Island in January 1911. He shed the old-world name Hermann, replacing it with Harry. Memory of his humiliation remained with Glickman. Through the years, he would repeat it many times, engraining it in his son Martin (Marty). The denial of the running medal would thread through Harry Glickman’s life, as it would through Marty’s.
As related by Gurock, disappointment and failure hounded Harry. Marrying a fellow immigrant, Harry and wife Molly, along with three children, escaped the tumult of the Lower East Side, moving to Jewish neighborhoods in the Bronx and Brooklyn, often close by extended family. In the cotton goods business, Harry rose from clerk to owner, but the Great Depression brought financial duress. Convicted of bankruptcy fraud – based on evidence of concealed assets – a humiliated Harry was incarcerated for over a year, undoubtedly reinforcing his sense of just reward denied.
Early on, Harry recognized Marty’s athletic potential, perhaps viewing his son as the redeemer of thwarted dreams. Along the Coney Island beach, father and son would race competitively. In the neighborhood, Marty won the sobriquet “the fastest kid on the block,” the eventual title of his autobiography.
Young Marty resolved that someday he would win a medal as an Olympic runner to give to his father. An outstanding schoolboy athlete at Brooklyn’s James Madison High School, he excelled in track and football. As safety, tailback, and signal caller, Glickman engaged in epic gridiron battles against Erasmus High’s Sid Luckman, a fellow Jew and future Chicago Bears quarterback.
A combination of a scholarship funded by Jewish boosters and part-time jobs enabled Glickman to attend Syracuse University, which, like many colleges at the time, maintained a Jewish quota. At SU, Glickman continued to excel on the track and gridiron. But he came to regret his failure to advocate for football teammate Wilmeth Sidat-Singh, when SU acceded to the University of Maryland’s demand that the Black athlete not take the field.
Following his freshman year at SU, 18-year-old Marty Glickman, part of the U.S. Olympic team, traveled to the Europe his father fled. The Olympic summer of 2024 is an appropriate time to remember Glickman’s experience at the Berlin Olympics.
On the morning of Saturday, August 9, 1936, the day of their scheduled heats and final, Glickman and fellow Jewish runner Sam Stoller were informed by Dean Cromwell, the American coach for the event, that they would not compete for the U.S. in the 4 ×100 meters race that they had long trained for. Black runners Ralph Metcalfe and Jesse Owens would replace the two Jews. Although the U.S. was favored to win the event with Glickman and Stoller competing, Cromwell claimed Germany might produce a surprise runner even though it is impossible to hide an athlete in Olympic competition. Protesting against the change, Owens argued futilely that he had already won three medals, and that Glickman and Stoller deserved their chance. The reconstituted American team won the relay with a record time of 39.8 seconds. The German team that Cromwell claimed to fear placed third, finishing in 41.2 seconds. Had Glickman and Stoller competed and run their usual times, the American team would have still finished first, although without the world record made possible by Owens. Marty Glickman always believed that Cromwell and his friend Avery Brundage, president of the American Olympic Committee, were antisemites. For many years, Glickman seethed privately before finally issuing a blunt assessment of the motivation for his elimination and that of Stoller from the relay: “Brundage and Cromwell did not want to embarrass their Nazi friends by having two Jewish athletes stand on the winner’s podium.”
Despite the four gold medals of African-American phenom Jesse Owens at the Berlin Olympics, Richard Manell’s “The Nazi Olympics” questions whether Jewish athletes, the United States and European democracies should have participated in the 1936 games. Hosting the 1936 Olympics, Fuhrer Adolf Hitler, temporarily hiding the most brutal aspects of the Third Reich, posed as a reasonable, benevolent statesman, further encouraging the appeasement policies of Western democracies that long failed to draw a hardline against German rearmament, antisemitism and territorial demands. Moreover, the Nazis won the 1936 Olympics, in terms of total points, even though Germany, lacking prior interest in modern sport, had never done well in previous games. Hitler’s triumph in the Berlin Olympics heightened the German people’s belief that under his leadership further triumph of inspired totalitarians over degenerate democrats was inevitable.
Marty would face totalitarians again. During World War II, he served as a marine lieutenant in the Pacific. Like many returning veterans, he prospered in postwar American.
From the late 1940s through the early 1990s, Glickman was the voice of New York City sports, broadcasting on radio and TV. Given the range of sports he covered, Glickman provided the soundtrack for the metropolitan area throughout the four seasons. As the jock behind the microphone, his rapid-fire delivery was distinctive, authoritative, contagiously enthusiastic and occasionally punctuated by Yiddishisms.
Glickman’s 1940 marriage to high school sweetheart, Marge Dorman, was a happy one, enduring until his 2001 death at age 83. Despite the long and erratic hours of broadcasting, their only prolonged separation was during Marty’s military service. Their four children and 10 grandchildren were a source of pride. And during his later years, Marty savored the achievements of Marv Albert, Bob Costa and other broadcasters he had mentored.
Still, there was a shadow over Glickman’s long and meritorious life. Until the end, he would lament that, “My father and I, we didn’t get our medals.”