Bright Path: Jim Thorpe

With the Games going on in Rio and Team USA in the lead in medal count as of this writing, we're going beyond the normal focus of this blog to honor the first Native to compete for a US Olympic Team.  While most people could answer that trivia question correctly as Jim Thorpe (1887-1953), few realize how versatile an athlete he really was, the struggles it took him to get to the Olympics and beyond, and that he died in poverty, unrecognized and unappreciated for what he'd done.

Jim Thorpe was born near Prague, Oklahoma and baptized as Jacobus Franciscus Thorpe, which was shortened early in his life to Jim.  His father was Sac and Fox/Irish and his mother was Potawatomi/French.  He was raised in Sac and Fox tradition, with his Native name Wa-Tho-Huk meaning "Bright Path".  Academics were a struggle.  Jim's older brother Charlie helped him through school until Charlie died of pneumonia.  Depressed and frustrated, Jim ran away from school and his father sent him to a Native boarding school in Kansas.  Jim's mother died of childbirth complications and Jim ran from that school, too.  He and his father had a rocky relationship and Jim left home to work on a horse ranch.  He later returned and his father sent him to the Indian School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.  There, Coach Glenn Scobey "Pop" Warner discovered his amazing football talent.  Tragedy struck again when Jim's father Hiram died of gangrene after a work accident and Jim left, Carlisle.  He would later return to school. 

In addition to football, Jim excelled at track and field events.  Although he preferred high jump, long jump and shot put, he was an excellent runner.  But he didn't confine his efforts to football and track.  He also played baseball and lacrosse and won a ballroom dancing intercollegiate championship in 1912.  But it was in football that he first came to national attention, leading his team in 1911 to an 18-15 upset of Harvard University.  In 1912, Carlisle became the national champions.  Thorpe was awarded All-American honors in 1911 and 1912.  To earn extra money, he played baseball during the summer for the Eastern Carolina League, something that would come back to haunt him later.

He qualified to the 1912 Stockholm Olympics in the decathlon and pentathlon and was also selected to compete in the long jump and high jump.  He placed high in both the long jump and high jump, but won gold in both the decathlon and pentathlon.  Just before he was due to compete in his favorite events, the high jump and long jump, he found that someone had stolen his shoes.  He found two mismatched shoes in the garbage, got an extra sock to compensate for the size of the shoe on his left foot, and competed anyway.  There's no evidence that, as he accepted the award for the Pentathlon from King Gustav V of Sweden, who reportedly said, "you, sir, are the greatest athlete in the world," that Thorpe replied, "thanks, King."  That story only gained currency years after the Olympics.

He returned to America a hero, but that wouldn't be for long.  In September, 1912, he returned to New York to compete in the Amateur Athletic Union's All-Around Championships in track and field (then called Athletics) and won, breaking several records.  It was at this point that the AAU, which had known about his summer baseball playing all along, decided to make it an issue and stripped his medals.  In that day, amateur athlete meant just that, with no allowance made for athletes who earned money in one sport while training and competing as amateurs in another.  The AAU tipped off the International Olympic Committee, who then decided, several months after the Stockholm games and in violation of their own rules, to strip him of his Olympic medals and records, as well, declaring Thorpe a professional athlete.

The upshot was that he was offered positions with several professional clubs.  He began with baseball.  Because the team he had played for was disbanded, he was considered a free agent and chose the New York Giants, winning a World Series with them in 1913.  He also played sporadically with the Milwaukee Brewers and Cincinnati Reds.  He played football with various clubs, including several that would become NFL teams later on, though he never played an NFL game.  He retired in 1928 and the Depression hit the following year.  He worked odd jobs to support his family, including playing an Indian Chief in a few early Westerns, working as a bouncer, a security guard, and a ditch digger.  By 1950, he was in such financial straits that, when he was admitted to a hospital for lip cancer, he was considered a charity case.  His wife went on the radio to plead for monetary help for their family.  He died of heart failure in 1953.

It wasn't until 1983 that the IOC restored Thorpe's amateur status and presented his children with commemorative medals.  His original medals from Stockholm had been displayed in a museum and stolen.  He was buried in the town named after him, Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania.  The monument over the grave contains King Gustav's quote and soil from Oklahoma and the stadium in Stockholm.  He features prominently on lists of the greatest athletes of the 20th century, and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.  He's also an inductee for halls of fame in college football, the Olympics and track and field.  The Jim Thorpe Award goes to the best defensive back in college football, and he was honored with a postage stamp in 1998.