Superintendent’s Chat

Richard McClements, Shonto Preparatory School

Jim Thorpe has been called by many as being the greatest natural athlete to have ever lived. He was a Native American from the Sac and Fox Tribe. He was born in 1888.

Jim Thorpe gained national acclaim while attending the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in the early 1900’s. This small college was located in Pennsylvania and hosted Native Americans from across the country. It was here that everyone first learned that this Indian could excel in any sport he chose to enter. First he tried track. He broke the school record for the high jump on his very first attempt in work boots and overalls. He won six different track events for his team at one meet – an unheard of achievement. Later at the Olympics, he competed in 15 events. Then he decided that he wanted to play football. He became the best football player in America and helped his team win the 1912 national collegiate football championship and scored 25 touchdowns that year. In that year, he also happened to compete against the great general who was to lead the D-Day Invasion and later become President of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower. He also entered the 1912 Olympics and won two gold medals in the pentathlon and the decathlon. In the pentathlon, Jim won the broad jump, the 200 meter hurdles, the discuss throw, 1500 meter run, and was third in the javelin. In the decathlon, he was first in the high hurdles, the shot put, the high jump and the 1,500 meter race. He had also finished third in the 100 meters, the discus, the pole vault, and the broad jump. He had shattered several existing world and Olympic records.

In 1913, it was discovered that Jim Thorpe had unknowingly violated the Olympic amateur status, since he had played semi-pro baseball in 1909 and 1910 and was paid for doing so. The Olympic Committee stripped him of both gold metals. Other Olympic athletes had done the same thing but had used other names and had gotten away with it. Another possible reason was that the man that Thorpe had beaten in the Olympics pentathlon and decathlon events was Avery Brundage, who later became Chairman of the United States Olympic Committee. It wasn’t until 1982, just after Avery Brundage died, that the Olympic Committee reinstated Jim Thorpe’s right to those two medals and changed the record books to reflect it.

He played professional football until the age of 41. He later became the first president of the National Football League. He also played professional baseball for six years. Following the end of his sports career, life became difficult for Jim, as he battled alcoholism and had an assortment of low-level jobs.

The fact that he was voted the greatest athlete of the first 50 years by the Associated Writers’ Press in 1950 and the best athlete of the 20^th Century by ABC’s Wide World of Sports should make every Native American fill with pride. He was considered a better athlete than Joe Louis, Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, Jessie Owens, Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Jim Brown, Walter Payton, Muhammad Ali, Tiger Woods, and other greats of the past 100 years. Jim Thorpe was 6’1” and weighed 190 pounds.

You should definitely watch a movie made in 1951 entitled, “Jim Thorpe – All American.” Jim Thorpe was present throughout the shooting of that movie as an advisor. Two years later in 1953, Jim Thorpe died.

We have four books in our library about the life of Jim Thorpe.