Jim Thorpe Birthday Celebration
May 19 & 20, 2012
Jim Thorpe, PA
Presented
by the
Jim Thorpe Chamber of Commerce
No modern-era
athlete embodies the joy of competition the way Jim Thorpe did.
He seemed to excel at everything: at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics he
accomplished the never-to-be-duplicated feats of winning both the
pentathlon and decathlon. As a football player at the Carlisle School,
he was unparalleled. He played major league baseball for over 6 years,
hitting.327 his last year.
Recently someone discovered a ticket, hidden for decades in an old
book, to a game featuring a barnstorming exhibition basketball team led
by none other than Jim Thorpe. He even dazzled on the back of a horse,
on the ballroom dance floor, and at bowling, where he averaged over 200.
Despite his celebrity, Jim Thorpe was unassuming. At the ticker tape
parade held in his honor in New York City after his Olympic victories,
he is said to have remarked that he never knew he had so many friends.
President
Dwight D. Eisenhower once said, "Here and there, there are some people
who are supremely endowed. My memory goes back to Jim Thorpe. He never
practiced in his life, and he could do anything better than any other
football player I ever saw."
He rode his physical gifts as hard and far as they would take him, in
an age when knees and shoulders could not be reconstructed, until he
finally left professional sports at the age of 40 in 1928. He led a
difficult life after that, until his death in 1953.
A year later,
in search of a proper memorial, Jim Thorpe's third wife, Patricia,
moved his body to Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania and, in return, the
struggling coal country town changed its name to Jim Thorpe.
Ten years after
Jim Thorpe’s death, he would become one of the 17 charter members
of the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, where he played his
first professional football game.
For anyone who grew up knowing of the deeds and legend of the great Jim
Thorpe, or who became interested in his story after ESPN anointed him
the greatest athlete of the 20th century, his memorial, built by the
community on a hill on the east side of town, feels authentic and
sincere.
While Jim Thorpe never lived in Mauch Chunk, it is fitting and
appropriate that he is memorialized here, in the state where he spent
his proudest years, in the town that changed its name to his.
