Thorpe grew up in the Sac and Fox Nation in Oklahoma, and attended Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He played professional sports until age 41, the end of his sports career coinciding with the start of the Great Depression. He was married three times and had eight children, before suffering from heart failure and dying in 1953.
About Jim Thorpe in brief
James Thorpe was the first Native American to win a gold medal for the United States. Thorpe grew up in the Sac and Fox Nation in Oklahoma, and attended Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He played professional sports until age 41, the end of his sports career coinciding with the start of the Great Depression. He suffered from alcoholism, and lived his last years in failing health and poverty. He was married three times and had eight children, before suffering from heart failure and dying in 1953. The Associated Press named him the \”greatest athlete\” from the first 50 years of the 20th century. The Pro Football Hall of Fame inducted him as part of its inaugural class in 1963. A Pennsylvania town was named in his honor and has a monument site that contains his remains, which were the subject of legal action. He appeared in several films and was portrayed by Burt Lancaster in the 1951 film Jim Thorpe – All-American. His native name, Wa-Tho-Huk, translated as ‘Bright Path’, was named for something occurring around the time of his birth, in this case the brightening of the cabin where he was born. His parents were both of mixed-race ancestry. His father, Hiram Thorpe, had an Irish father and a Sac and fox Indian mother. His mother, Charlotte Vieux, had a French father and an Potawatomi mother, a descendant of Chief Louis Vieux. He died in 1953 at the age of 67. He is buried in the town of Bellemont, Pennsylvania, where he lived with his wife and eight children.
He had a twin brother, Charlie, who died of pneumonia when he was nine years old. He also had a son, Charlie Thorpe Jr., who died in 2002. He has a daughter, Laura Thorpe. He lived in the San Diego, California, area and died in 2007. He never had a child of his own and was married to his second wife, Barbara Thorpe; the couple had one son, Charles Thorpe III, who was also a professional football player. His son Charlie died in 2008 at age 63. He passed away in 2011 at age 87. He left behind a wife and a son. He won Olympic gold medals in the 1912 pentathlon and decathlon. He later played American football, professional baseball, and basketball. He served as the first president of the American Professional Football Association, which became the NFL in 1922. He went on to play for six teams in the National Football League, including the New York Giants and the Canton Bulldogs. In 1913, Thorpe won the All-Around Championship of the Amateur Athletic Union. In 1915, he was a two-time All- American for the school’s football team. In 1912, he added a victory in the amateur football championship to his Olympic gold medal win. He lost his Olympic titles after it was found he had been paid for playing two seasons of semi-professional baseball before competing in the Olympics, thus violating the amateurism rules.
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This page is based on the article Jim Thorpe published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 05, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
