http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?articleID=070921_1_A4_Thorp3618
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Only in Oklahoma: Thorpe not diminished in eyes of world

by: GENE CURTIS
9/21/2007

An Oklahoma Indian was called the "greatest athlete in the world" after the
1912 Olympic games in Stockholm, and he came home to a ticker tape parade
through New York City.

"I couldn't realize how one fellow could have so many friends," Jim Thorpe
said of the crowd that cheered for him as he was driven through the city.

But a few months later, Thorpe's world blew up. The Olympic Committee
stripped him of his medals and erased his records from the books. His crime
was that he played semi-pro baseball to earn spending money during the
summer of 1910.

Thorpe readily admitted playing for the Rocky Mount club in the Eastern
Carolina league for $30 to $60 per month, but said he didn't realize it was
a problem. He also pointed out that many other amateurs also played
semi-pro baseball -- but they all used fake names. Thorpe used his own.

Although the committee stripped Thorpe of his honors, it couldn't discount
his feats or take back the words of King Gustav V, who told him in a
congratulatory speech: "Sir, you are the greatest athlete in the world. It
would be an honor to shake your hand."

Nor could it diminish the esteem felt by American sports writers who voted
Thorpe the athlete of the half-century in 1950; nor of Oklahomans who voted
Thorpe their favorite son -- after Will Rogers -- in a 1988 poll by the AP
to pick the state's favorite son or daughter. The AP had told those being
polled to assume that Will Rogers was the favorite son and to list 10
others as their favorite son or daughter.

Thorpe also was included in the first group of athletes inducted into Pro
Football's Hall of Fame in 1963. He was inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of
Fame in 1950.

Thorpe had won the decathlon and pentathlon at the Olympics. With almost no
specialized training, he swamped the world's best athletes, winning every
event in the pentathlon except the javelin throw. He scored victories in
four events of the decathlon and finished no worse than fourth in the other
six.

After his medals were taken from him, the committee offered them to the
runners-up, but they refused to accept the first-place prizes.

"James Thorpe won the event, not I," each said.

Replicas of the medals finally were returned to Thorpe's family in 1982 and
in 1986 were donated to the state for display below Thorpe's portrait in
the state Capitol rotunda. They have been at the Oklahoma Historical
Society since 1999 after being returned by a janitor who stole them from
the Capitol.

Thorpe, who died nearly penniless in 1953 at age 73, told a Tulsa World
reporter in 1950 that one of his fondest memories, aside from the Olympic
games, was the Carlisle Institute football game against Army that the
Indians won 27-6. Thorpe scored only one touchdown, but he had to run 195
yards to make it.

He had caught the opening kickoff on Carlisle's 5-yard line and ran all the
way to score. That touchdown was called back because of a penalty, and Army
kicked off again. Thorpe caught that ball on the goal line and ran the
length of the field to make a score that counted.

Thorpe came to the attention of famed coach Glenn S. "Pop" Warner in 1907
when he returned to Carlisle at age 16 after an absence of a couple of
years. The spring athletic season had started and Thorpe was watching high
jumping practice. He asked whether he could try it after the bar was raised
so high that none of the jumpers could clear it.

As the other boys snickered, Thorpe, wearing overalls and old tennis shoes,
took a short run and leaped over the bar. One of the boys told Warner, who
looked up Thorpe the next day.

"Do you know what you've done?" Warner asked rhetorically. "You've broken
the school record for high jump. Go down to the clubhouse and trade those
overalls for a track suit." Warner worked with Thorpe and he went out for
football in the fall -- and his athletic career had begun.

Although most people believed Carlisle was a college, it was a preparatory
school that had no classes past the 12th grade. But many of its students
were much older than normal high school students; some were in their late
20s. Thorpe was 19 in 1907.

A movie about the athlete's life, "Jim Thorpe, All American," was filmed in
1950 in Muskogee with the Bacone College campus representing Carlisle. Burt
Lancaster and Phyllis Thaxter played the leads with Thorpe acting as
technical adviser.

But when it came time for the premiere in Muskogee on Aug. 20, 1951,
neither Thorpe nor the movie Thorpe, Lancaster, showed up. Lancaster was in
Rome, where he was acting in a movie.

Thorpe was not present because he had asked for $1,000 to come to Muskogee
plus $400 each for five personal appearances. Neither the city nor the
studio desired to meet his price.

He was paid $50,000 for the rights to film the picture plus other fees that
totaled nearly another $50,000.

After Thorpe's death, his widow, Patricia, had his body taken to
Pennsylvania where two communities, Mauch Chunk and East Mauch Chunk,
merged, built a memorial to the athlete and adopted the name Jim Thorpe.

Patricia, Thorpe's third wife, said she didn't have sufficient money to
build a suitable memorial in Oklahoma. The Legislature had appropriated
$25,000 to build a memorial in Yale, where Thorpe lived from 1917 to 1923,
but Gov. Johnston Murray did not approve the appropriation.