Rudi Klobach was born in 1944 in the Nazis’ Theresienstadt concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. After World War II, Rudi and his family, who were Jewish, moved to Düsseldorf. The Klobachs moved to the United States when Rudi was 4. He ultimately became soccer coach at Delran High, where one of his prized players was Carli Lloyd, hero of last night’s USA World Cup title victory.
Even some of his closest friends didn’t know that Klobach, who was 70, had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (known as Lou Gehrig’s disease) when he died last January. During a three-year battle with the disease, he told those friends that he had only a pinched nerve, which was what inhibited his walking. No one is sure why he hid his condition.
Check out the New York Times piece:
