FACTS ABOUT JIM THORPE

1. He was a member of the Sauk and Fox tribe. His Native American name was “Bright Path.”  He learned to break horses from his father.  He used to spend hours observing horses and patterned his running after them.
2. At age 6, he and his twin brother Charlie were sent to a boarding school twenty miles away. He did not like school and would sometimes go home, running the whole twenty miles.  His father would promptly send him back.
3. After his brother died of pneumonia at age 8, he was sent to a boarding school in Kansas. When his father was injured in a hunting accident, Jim went home, but he took the wrong train and ended up 270 miles away.  He proceeded to walk home from there.  It took two weeks.  His father recovered, but his mother died when he was 14 and his father when he was 17.
4. He ended up at Carlisle Indian Industrial School, the most famous school for Native Americans. One day he was walking past the track and he saw the track team practicing the high jump.  He asked to try, in his working clothes.  The track team thought this would be funny and set the bar at a school record 5’8”.  He cleared it on his first try.  He was now an athlete and starred in track, baseball, field hockey, basketball, lacrosse, and even ballroom dancing.  But his biggest success was in football, where he was coached by the legendary Pop Warner.  He led the football team to victories over Harvard and Army.  He was an All-American.
5. In 1912, he made the Olympic team and was off to Stockholm, Sweden. He and a Jewish athlete had to sleep with the luggage on the ocean liner.  He participated in the pentathlon and decathlon.  Before the first event, his shoes were stolen.  He found two shoes in a trash can.  They were mismatched.  He ended up winning four of five events in the pentathlon and also easily winning the decathlon.  Upon being presented with his two gold medals by the King of Sweden, Thorpe responded:  “Thanks, King.”  He returned to a tickertape parade in New York City.  Unfortunately, an investigation showed that he had played some semi-professional baseball and thus was not an amateur in the Olympics.  He was stripped of his gold medals.  (In 1983, they were returned to his family.)
6. Thorpe became one of the first great professional athletes. He played six seasons of baseball and was pretty good, but he had trouble hitting curve balls.  He excelled at football.  He signed a big contract to play for the Canton Bulldogs and led them to three championships.  He ended up playing a total of 13 seasons with various teams.
7. After his football career, he went to Hollywood, but was limited to Native American roles in Westerns. He created the Native American Actors Guild to help Indians get roles.  A movie entitled “Jim Thorpe – All American” was made about him, starring a darkened-skinned Burt Lancaster.
8. Several myths developed about him. People claimed he never trained and just relied on his natural abilities.  In fact, he was a hard trainer.  After retiring, it was said that he lived in poverty in a trailer.  The truth was that although he did live in a trailer, it was because he liked to travel.  He was accused of alcoholism, but there is no proof he had an alcohol problem.  This was just an Indian stereotype people wanted to believe.
9. After his death from a heart attack at age 65, his third wife wanted his body to be buried in Oklahoma in a mausoleum. Since no town would agree to build the mausoleum, she looked for a city that would.  Mauch Chunk and East Mauch Chunk in Pennsylvania agreed to merge and change their names to Jim Thorpe, Pa.  A $10,000 mausoleum was built and that is where his body is interred.

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