Tearful reunion at Games

Press, 27 July 1976, Page 30

Tearful reunion at Games

NZPA-Reuter Montreal East Germany’s swimming champion, Komelia Ender, cried yesterday as she greeted the grandmother she had not seen since she was a baby. The 66-yer.r-old grandmother. Mrs Rosalie Lehmann, despite the three heart attacks she has had in the last two years, flew to Montreal from Salina, Kansas, to see Miss Ender swim. Mrs Lehmann, with her second husband, Kurt, left East Germany when Miss Ender was one in 1959, two years before the Berlin Wall was built and emigration was reduced to a trickle. The Lehmanns waited in a room at the Canadian Olympic Committee headquarters for Miss Ender and her fiance, the 26-year-old backstroke swimmer, Roland Matthes. “She had tears in her eyes when she saw me, and said, ‘Omi’ (an affectionate name for grandmother) and I cried.” Mrs Lehmann said. Neither Matthes nor Miss Ender spoke to the'press as they rushed off for swimming training. East German officials also were nowhere near the reunion scene and said by telephone the meeting “was a strictly private affair.” Women's golf.— Marilyn Smith (New Zealand) has finished 10 strokes behind the leader and well down the field in the Lady Kingstone women’s open golf tournament at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The winner, Susie Benning (United States), won SUS7OOO for her 215-stroke win; Miss Smith got SUS6I3.