On this day in 1913, Jim Thorpe, the first Native American to win an Olympic Gold Medal and one of the most gifted athletes of all time, was stripped of his “Olympic titles, medals and awards.”
Thorpe had won two golds in the 1912 Stockholm Games in decathlon and pentathlon. Competing in 15 track and field events, he placed in all the events and took first in five; the long jump, discus, javelin throw, 200-meter dash an a 1500-meter race. (Above, Thorpe in 1912)
Piling up more than 8,000 points, he bested the Silver medalist by more than 700 points. It was an Olympic record that would stand for decades.
Thorpe became an international superstar overnight. During the closing medals ceremony, Sweden’s King Gustov called him the greatest athlete in the world.
Some six months later in a controversial decision, however, the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) revoked Thorpe’s amatuer status after it was reported that in 1911 he had been paid by a semi-professional baseball team in the Eastern North Carolina League.
Thorpe said he had no idea he had broken the rules. It was common practice in the day for college athletes to compete with semi-pro teams in the summer using aliases. Thorpe, by contrast, had played using his own name.
For Thorpe it was simply another misfortune in a life plagued with adversity. He was born Wa-Tho-Huk or “Bright Path” a member of the Sac and Fox Nation near Prague, Indian Territory (Oklahoma). When his twin brother, Charlie, died of pneumonia at age nine, Jim began running away and was sent to Haskell Indian School in Lawrence, Kansas.
Adding to his troubles, Thorpe’s mother died of complications from child-birth when he was just 12 and four years later, his father died following a hunting accident.
His athletic prowess at Haskell had not gone unnoticed. At age 16, he was recruited by legendary coach, Galen “Pop” Warner, (left) to play football at Carlisle Industrial Indian School. In 1911, he led Carlisle to a national collegiate championship by makiing 25 touchdowns ans scoring 197 points. It was his final year at Carlisle that he competed in the 1912 Olympics.
Being declared a professional by the AAU had its advantages for Thorpe. The sensation of the Summer Games received dozens of offers from professional sports teams. He picked the World Champion New York Giants baseball team, playing with them for four years before being sold to Cincinnati. He also played briefly for the Boston Braves.
In addition to baseball, however, Thorpe played professional football in the fledgling NF. And in the mid-20’s he’d toured the country with an all-Native American basketball team.
His success on the playing field was never matched in his personal life. Married three times, he struggled to make a living outside of sports. He appeared in several films during a brief flirtation with the movies, but soon was forced to work at menial jobs as a doorman, bouncer and even a ditch digger.
Problems with alcohol surfaced late in his life. Diagnosed with cancer in 1950, he was admitted to a Philadelphia hospital as a charity case. He died in Los Angeles three years later, March 28, 1953, of an apparent heart attack. He was 65.
Sadly, his troubles didn’t end there. Friends and members of the Sac and Fox Nation raised money to bring Thorpe back to Oklahoma for burial, Their petition to the state seeking funds for a memorial was refused, however.
Third wife, Patricia Askew, astounded Thorpe’s family by making a bizarre deal with the Pennsylvania town of Mauch Chunk. For a “monitary consideration” Thorpe’s remains were moved to Mauch Chunk where the community built a memorial mausoleum and renamed the town Jim Thorpe.
Even though Mauch Chunk was just 100 miles from Carlisle there was apparently no connection between the town and Thorpe. No records indicate he had ever been there. Thorpe’s son, Jack, accused Askew of “stealing” his father’s remains and selling them simply for money. Askew, however, claimed she was angered by Oklahom’a refusal to provide a proper memorial. 
In 2010 Thorpe’s son, Jack, filed suit in Federal Court to reclaim his father’s remains under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. In 2013 a district court judge ruled the monument was a museum, therefore making it subject to the repatriation statute. A year later, however, The Third Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the lower court decision, ruling in the community’s favor. In 2015, the United States Supreme Court refused to hear the case, ending a protracted legal battle.
Writer Robert Wheeler, author of Jim Thorpe: World’s Greatest Athlete, worked for years to have the IOC’s decision overturned and have Thorpe’s medals restored. The IOC failed to follow its own rather Victorian rules, Wheeler said, which state disqualifications must be handed down within 30 days of the event. In 1982, the committee did, in fact, relent after years of criticism, striking copies of his medals to present to the family. Thorpe’s name had still not been re-entered into the official records of the games as late as 2012. It is unclear if that is still the case but unofficial sources and internet lists of medalists do include him.
After a life of struggle, Thorpe received a number of posthumous accolades. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame as a member of the charter class in 1963. President Richard Nixon proclaimed April 16, 1973, as Jim Thorpe Day. The Jim Thorpe Award, established in 1982, is given annually to football’s best collegiate defensive back and fans in an ABC sports poll conducted several years ago named him the best athlete of all time.
The Jim Thorpe Home, 706 East Boston Avenue, Yale, Oklahoma, was purchased by the Oklahoma Historical Society in 1968. Thorpe and his first wife lived in the house from 1917 to 1923. Maintained by the Jim 
Thorpe Foundation as an intimate museum, the site is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Admission is free and the house is open to the public Wednesday through Saturday from 9 sto 5. For more information go to okhistory.org, call (918) 387-2815 or e-mail jimthorpe@okhistory.org. © Text Only – 2017 – Headin’ West LLC – All photos – public domain.