Jim Thorpe!

The Greatest Athlete in the World. That is quite a title. One that would be hard to live up to or beat. You may be very good at football, baseball, lacrosse, basketball, hockey or golf; but are you good at all of them? What about adding in a champion ballroom dancer? There is one athlete that was all of these and in 122 years not one single person has been able to match his abilities.

Jim Thorpe was born in 1877 in Indian Territory. This part of the United States is now called Oklahoma. Jim’s family was living on the Sac and Fox tribal lands near where a little town named Prague would be built. Although Jim was not 100% Native American, under existing laws at the time he was considered an Indian. Jacobus Franciscus Thorpe or Jim also had an Indian name. It was Wa-Tho-Huk which means bright path. 

Jim was sent to Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania where he became involved in sports and met a coach named Glen Warner. Everyone called the coach Pop. Pop Warner saw greatness in Jim and encouraged him to participate in the track team. He then joined the football team and became a star but he got bored and decided to leave school to play baseball. He was good enough at baseball that he got a job playing for two different semi-pro teams in North Carolina before going back to Carlisle. 

In 1912 Jim Thorpe became the first American Indian athlete to represent the United States at the Olympic Games. He entered two of the hardest events, the decathlon and the pentathlon. Just before he was to compete he found out his shoes were missing. Someone had stolen them. There was no time to get new ones so he searched lockers and trash cans. He broke records and won gold medals in both events wearing mismatched shoes. A year later his medals were taken away. At the time you could not be paid to play any sport and Jim had played baseball. 

This wasn’t the end of his athletic career though. He went on to play professional baseball for the New York Giants, Boston Braves and Cincinnati Reds. During the “off season" he rested by playing professional football. In 1920 he became the president of the new American Professional Football Association. Two years later the name of the association was changed to the National Football League. What we know as the NFL.

From 1917-1923 Jim and his wife bought and lived in a house in Yale, OK with their kids. The state of Oklahoma owns the house and you can take a tour and see some of his memorabilia. Jim Thorpe was inducted into the National Football Hall of Fame in 1963. Oklahoma City is home to the Jim Thorpe Museum where the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame is, and there is a town in Pennsylvania named Jim Thorpe. 

After 110 years of people fighting for what was right the International Olympic Committee gave Jim Thorpe’s Olympic medals back.