Hall of Fame

hall of fame

Jim Thorpe

Track and Field

Olympian in Stockholm 1912 Olympic Games

What couldn’t Jim Thorpe do?

He was the first Native American to win an Olympic gold medal for the United States,sweeping the pentathlon and decathlon at the Stockholm 1912 Olympic Games.

Thorpe later played six seasons of Major League Baseball and12 seasons of professional football and for two years served as the firstpresident of the American Professional Football Association, the precursor tothe National Football League. Thorpe led an American Indian basketball team onbarnstorming tours. He even won the 1912 intercollegiate ballroom dancingchampionship.

Thorpe,who happened upon football at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, was inducted into theCollege Football Hall of Fame and the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Add all of that up and Thorpe – a member of the Sac and Fox Nation who grew up in present-day Oklahoma (Oklahoma did not become a state until 1907) – isgenerally considered among the greatest athletes of his time.

“Thorpe was the greatest athlete of his time,maybe of any time in any land,” the legendary sportswriter Red Smith wrote.

The only controversy concerning Thorpe’s athletic career came in 1913 when the International Olympic Committee stripped Thorpe’s gold medals because he had played two seasons of summertime semi-pro baseball. Other athletes had done the same, Thorpe argued, but they had used an alias. It would take some time, but in 1982 theIOC restored Thorpe’s gold medals.

Thorpe died of a heart attack in 1953, sparking one lastcontroversy. His third wife arranged for Thorpe to be buried in a centralPennsylvania town that changed its name to Jim Thorpe, Pa., to honor the lateathlete. Other family members wanted the remains returned to Oklahoma and thebattle went all the way to the Supreme Court before it was decided that Thorpewould remain buried in Jim Thorpe.

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