Arie Gill

At the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, Arie Gluck was a member of the first Israeli track & field team, running the 400 and 800 metres. Gluck had been born in Czechoslovakia but his father left for Israel when it became a country, and his mother and Gluck followed him by boat shortly thereafter. Gluck was an Israeli national champion in both the 400 and 800 metres. Before the Olympics, Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion asked the Israeli athletes to change their last names to something that was “pure Hebrew.” Gluck chose “Gill”, which means joy in Hebrew, and competed under that name at Helsinki. He later named his first son Gill in its honor.

Gluck moved to the United States in the early 1960s and became director of a summer camp in the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania. He ran Camp Harlam as director from 1966-2003. Gluck returned to Israel frequently to visit old friends, but he lived the rest of his life, and died, in Pennsylvania.

Personal Bests: 400 – 49.6 (1952); 800 – 1:59.7 (1952).