Glenn Cowan

Who was Glenn Cowan?

Glenn L. Cowan was an American table tennis player, and arguably one of two critical personalities, the other being the Chinese table tennis player Zhuang Zedong, in the 1971 Ping Pong Diplomacy which served as a prelude to the normalization of the Sino-American relations.

Cowan, a former Santa Monica College student, died in 2004. He had been hospitalized for psychiatric treatment and underwent a bypass surgery. During the surgery, he went into a coma and died of a heart attack.

Zhuang Zedong called from Beijing to express his sympathy, and in 2007 visited the United States, and met Cowan's mother. He called never seeing Cowan again the greatest "regret of my life."