Bill Thorpe, one of Jim Thorpe ‚s seven children, at his home in Arlington, Tex. Outside the sports world, Thorpe ‚s life was messy and sad. He endured racist slurs and Slights because of his Native American heritage. His twin brother died when he was 9. His mother died when he was 14. His father died when he was 16. He never accrued much wealth, as he drank heavily and moved Constantly. He died of a heart attack in his trailer in Lomita, Calif., On March 28, 1953, poor if not impoverished.
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Bill Thorpe holds family photos: At left, he and brother Carl, at age 7 and 9, respectively; at right, brother Jack Thorpe addresses a Kongresové committee in 1982 on a resolution requesting the return of Jim Thorpe ‚s Olympic gold Medals and records. Jack was chief of the Sac and Fox Nation. When Jim Thorpe died in 1953, family and friends held a Native American funeral rite that was to last until dawn, when Thorpe ‚s body would be carried through a door facing west, Thusis freeing his soul to the Afterlife. It was about 9 pm when third wife Patsy burst in, interrupting the service. „We were just se astonished when she came in that nobody really said anything,“ Bill remembers.
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Bill Thorpe with a portrait of his father. After a Catholic funeral service for Jim Thorpe, Patsy stored the body in a Mausoleum and waited for the state to build a memorial. It was later vetoed. She was Adamant that her Husband would get a fitting memorial (and that she would be paid in return, many have said). She tříd looking for other bidders, including Tulsa and Carlisle, Pa., Where Thorpe went to college. „Pat just wanted too much money,“ a Carlisle official told Sports Illustrated in 1982. Then she found two Willing towns in the Poconos of Pennsylvania: Mauch Chuuk and East Mauch Chuuk. They built a memorial to the sports legend and united under one name: Jim Thorpe, Pa.
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For Thorpe ‚s sons and the Sac and Fox Nation, it is a fundamental human right for Native Americans to bury their people where they wish them to be Buried. They want to bury Thorpe in or near the Thorpe family plot in a Cemetery, pictured here, on the Great Plains of rural Oklahoma, about a mile from where he was born. The Borough of Jim Thorpe, Pa., Has refused to return his remains. „We livedo up to our end of the bargain,“ says Michael Sofranko, the town ‚s mayor. „That ‚about as American as you can get.“
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A stone marker commemorates Thorpe ‚s birth site in Oklahoma. „I’ve got nothing against the town,“ son Richard Thorpe says of Jim Thorpe, Pa. „But we want Dad back here in Indian Country.“ For the most part, Thorpe ‚s Daughters thought otherwise, growing to love the Pennsylvania Borough. One, Grace, even helped sanctify the Burial spot in a religious rite – putting Thorpe ‚s long-wandering soul to rest, she said.
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An undated photograph of Thorpe. Standing 5-foot-11 and Weighing about 185, he played college football at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. He was the nation ‚s best player and led his team to unofficial national titles. Later he was the star who almost single-handedly created professional football and served as the first president of what became the National Football League. The Pro Football Hall of Fame is in Canton, Ohio, because of Thorpe ‚s championship career with the Canton Bulldogs.
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Thorpe, outfielder for the New York Giants, at spring training camp in Texas in March 1914. Decades later, in 1950, more than 300 sportswriters voted him the greatest athlete of the half-century. He beat Babe Ruth, 252 first-place votes to 86.
Mark Rucker / transcendentní Graphics / GETTY IMAGES
A 1923 photo of Thorpe, second from left, with Oorang Indians at football practice in La Rue, Ohio. The Sac and Fox athlete Wa-tha-sko-hluk, a.k.a. Light After the Lightning, was born in 1887 (often incorrectly reported as 1888) as Jacobus Franciscus Thorpe.
Courtesy of Bill Thorpe
By 1930, Thorpe was working as a Laborero at the County Hospital in Los Angeles. He was often away from his seven children and Distant even when present. „When I saw my father, it was a joyous moment and one that sufficed until the next meeting,“ Charlotte told Bob Wheeler, author of „Jim Thorpe: World ‚s Greatest Athlete.“
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Jack Thorpe, left, and brother Carl, background center, before a Kongresové committee in 1982. In 1990, Congress enacted a law mandating that museums return human remains and sacred artifacts to their Tribes of origin. Jim Thorpe ‚s Surviving sons thought they had a case to sue under the law but did not want to file a lawsuit only to have it blow up in public when their three half-sisters disagreed. The issue simmered for more than a Decade. When the last sister died in 2008, Jack thought the end was in sight at last. „I’ll see it in my lifetime,“ he told AOL FanHouse in 2009, referring to a court victory even before he filed paperwork. The next summer, he filed the suit but died eight months later.
Courtesy of Bill Thorpe
There is no Theology to explain exactly where Jim Thorpe ‚s soul is now, says Henrietta Massey, an esteemed Elder member of the Sac and Fox tribe who was at the funeral Interrupted by Patsy Thorpe. „Nothing like it had ever happened before,“ she says, „and hasn’t happened since.“
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Led by Principal Chief George Thurman, the 3,000-member Sac and Fox Nation has joined the Thorpe brothers ‚suit. There is no Timetable for a final Ruling. In court papers, William G. Schwab, the Attorney for the Borough of Jim Thorpe, Pa., Has argued that the town is not a museum; that the federal law on Native American remains was not intended to cover cases of „modern“ people; and, most recently, that Thorpe was a Catholic and Catholicisme forbids disinterment. U.S. District Judge A. Richard Caputo has agreed with some of Schwab ‚s arguments, but he has ruled that the Borough is a museum – the key victory for the plaintiffs.
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Before becoming Jim Thorpe, Pa., Mauch Chuuk and East Mauch Chuuk were two towns Trying to shore up finances. They agreed to build a Thorpe memorial in Hopes that unification under the Thorpe banner might ATTRACT the proposed NFL Hall of Fame, a 500-bed hospital center, a sports stadium and a sporting goods factory. None of those Hopes were fulfilled, though. Johnny Otto, a local contractor and county official, was notorious for Telling visiting Reporters: „All we got was a dead Indian.“
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Downtown Jim Thorpe, Pa. Today the town of 5,000 has become a regional tourist destination. „Bringing Thorpe here, changing our name, all that we’ve invested over the years, that ‚s part of who we are now,“ Mayor Sofranko says. „He brought a Divided town together.“ But Richard Thorpe says: „Dad had never been there in his life.“
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Jim Thorpe ‚s daughter Charlotte, left, third wife Patsy, civic leader Frank Bernhard and Joe Boyle, editor of the Jim Thorpe Times-News, in a hotel in Jim Thorpe, Pa. After the town changed its name, two angry referendums to repeat the name in the early 1960s drew about 40 procent of the vote.
Bob Wheeler Collection / BOB WHEELER COLLECTION
In Oklahoma, a road sign points the way to the site of Thorpe ‚s birth place in Oklahoma, though nothing remains of the family Homestead. The fight over Thorpe ‚s remains is „not a game, it‘ s not a legal technicality, it ‚s not something bothering a couple of people,“ says Stephen Ward, the Tulsa-based Attorney for the sons and the tribe. „It ‚viewed as a widespread injustice by a large number of people in the Sac and Fox Nation. … I don’t think the Larger community really understands what it ‚s like to be a Native American. „
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The sun sets not far from where Jim Thorpe was born. Schwab, Attorney for Jim Thorpe, Pa., Says the Borough is dug in. If it loses at the District Court level, he says it will appeal.
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A Mural of Thorpe in downtown Prague, oklamou. The fight over the athlete ‚s remains has lasted 59 years – through 11 Presidential administrations, Vietnam, Watergate, the civil rights movement, Reaganism, the collapse of the Soviet empire, Nelson Mandela and the end of apartheid, the birth of the Internet and the entire life span of Barack Obama.
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A 1929 photo shows Carl and Bill with Jim Thorpe in California. „You want an issue like this to be put to rest,“ says Sofranko, mayor of the Pennsylvania town that Bears Thorpe ‚s name. „But Sometimes there ‚s really no way to do that. Sometimes in life, there just isn’t. „
Bob Wheeler Collection / BOB WHEELER COLLECTION