Armitage, Norman C.
[Norman C. Cohn]
Fencing
b. Jan. 1, 1907, Albany, NY
d. March 14, 1972
Armitage took part in six Olympics, the first in 1928, the last in 1956. He was a member of the three-man color guard that carried the U. S. flag in the 1948 opening ceremonies, and he was the lone flag bearer in 1952 and in 1956. But, because fencing is barely publicized in America, he's virtually unknown.
He didn't take up the sport until he was a student at Columbia. In less than three years he won the Intercollegiate Fencing Association sabre championship in 1928. Armitage fenced in the national championships twenty-five times, finished among the top three in sabre twenty-two times, and won ten championships, in 1930, from 1934 through 36, from 1939 through 1943, and in 1945.
A chemical engineer and later a patent attorney, Armitage suffered third-degree chemical burns on his right hand and arm in a 1936 accident, and doctors said he would never fence again. Yet he made the Olympic team that year and he was on the bronze medal sabre team in 1948.