(1905-1955)
Inducted into Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, 1985
Born in Hartford, Abraham “Butch” Cohen played football on Dartmouth College’s undefeated 1925 national championship team and graduated from there in 1927. At Hartford High School, he played baseball, football and basketball. He continued those three sports at the Dean Academy in Massachusetts and at Dartmouth, where he lettered in all three.
For years after graduation, he scouted for Dartmouth at Yale football games, “perhaps the toughest spying assignment of the whole lot,” as an article in the Boston Globe reported.
His athletic skills were put to the test while honeymooning in 1934. He and his wife Harriet leapt 40 feet from the deck of the blazing Morro Castle ocean liner and swam four miles over six hours to reach the beach near Point Pleasant, New Jersey. He suffered cardiac strain from this experience and moved to Florida in 1948. There he worked in real estate and home building until his sudden death from a heart attack in 1955.