06:48 AM
11/21/24
11/21/24
July 25, 2010
Jim Thorpe's Son Sues Jim Thorpe, Pa., for Jim Thorpe's Corpse: The 72-year-old son of Jim Thorpe is suing the town of Jim Thorpe, Pa., to get his fathers remains for burial on Indian land. Thorpe, who was a 1912 Olympic gold medalist, Hall of Fame football player and Major League Baseball player, died in 1953. His wife Patricia made a deal with the towns of Mauch Chunk and East Mauch Chunk that they could have him if they built a monument and adopted his name for a merged town. Jack Thorpe waited for his stepmother and three half-sisters to die before pressing the issue. "I want to put him where he wanted to be," he said.
Patricia Thorpe, who was not Native American, arrived in the dark of that spring night with a hearse and a police escort. Thorpe's body was hauled away. Months later, after the Oklahoma governor vetoed an appropriation for a Thorpe memorial, a deal was struck with a couple of struggling towns in Pennsylvania.
I would hope that in this enlightened age that the people of that town will know that the right thing to do is to retrurn Thorpe's remains to his ancestral land.