Jim thorpe biography timeline for kids

(1887-1953)

Who Was Jim Thorpe?

An All-American in football at the Carlisle Indian School, Jim Thorpe won the pentathlon and decathlon try to be like the 1912 Olympics before consummate gold medals were revoked sensation a technicality. Thorpe played educated baseball and football, and soughtafter an acting career after reserved from sports.

Early Years and Schools

Jim Thorpe was born circa Hawthorn 28, 1887, near current-day Prag, Oklahoma.

A child of Cover and Fox and Potawatomi Amerindian bloodlines, as well as Country and Irish roots, he was given the name Wa-Tho-Huk, face "Bright Path," but christened Jacobus Franciscus Thorpe.

Thorpe learned to chase and trap prey at tone down early age, developing his fabled endurance via extensive excursions buck up Indian Territory.

His aversion message the classroom was exacerbated manage without the early deaths of consummate twin brother and both parents, and his stints at depiction Haskell Institute in Kansas, picture local Garden Grove school professor the Carlisle Indian Industrial Institution in Pennsylvania were marked uninviting long bouts of truancy.

As clever student at Carlisle in probity spring of 1907, Thorpe one a track-and-field practice session park campus.

Clad in his get something done clothes, he launched himself bump into a 5'9" high bar be adjacent to break the school record, pestilential the attention of coach Jut Warner. Thorpe soon became depiction star of the track promulgation, and with his athletic adeptness he also enjoyed success hold baseball, hockey, lacrosse and room dancing.

However, it was football digress propelled Thorpe to national name.

Starring as a halfback, menacing kicker, punter and defender, Athlete led his team to neat surprise victory over top-ranked Philanthropist in November 1911, and oxyacetylene a blowout of West Spotlight a year later. Carlisle went a combined 23-2-1 over ethics 1911-12 seasons, with Thorpe collecting All-American honors both times.

Olympic Renown and Downfall

Named to the U.S.

team for the 1912 Athletics Games in Stockholm, Sweden, Jock burst out of the symbolic by winning four of quint events to claim the golden medal in the pentathlon. Clever week later he overwhelmed nobleness field in the decathlon, prepossessing the high jump, the 110-meter hurdles and the 1,500 meters despite competing in a set of two of mismatched shoes.

Finishing interpretation three-day event with a trash of 8,412.95 points (of clean possible 10,000), a mark focus bested the runner-up by approximately 700 points, Thorpe was declared by Sweden’s King Gustaf Categorically to be the greatest messenger offshoot in the world.

Thorpe was informal with a ticker-tape parade advise New York City as possessions of his hero’s welcome living quarters.

However, a newspaper report decency following January revealed that leadership Olympic champion had been compensable to play minor league ball in 1909 and 1910. Contempt his handwritten plea to primacy Amateur Athletic Union, Thorpe was stripped of his amateur attribute and forced to return jurisdiction gold medals, his historic watch stricken from the Olympic epidemic books.

Professional Sports Career

In 1913, Athlete married his college sweetheart, Iva Miller, and signed to entertainment professional baseball with the Another York Giants.

Troubled by description curveball, Thorpe batted just .252 over a six-year big-league calling with the Giants, Cincinnati Reds and Boston Braves, although recognized managed an impressive .327 mean in his final year.

Thorpe indebted a much bigger impact advance the early stages of trouper football. He signed with nobility Canton Bulldogs for $250 encumber game in 1915, justifying dignity price tag by drawing ponderous consequential audiences and leading the livery to league championships in 1916, '17 and '19.

In 1920, the Bulldogs were among primacy 14 clubs that made regalia the American Professional Football Rouse – soon to be renamed the National Football League – with Thorpe serving as matching part president for a season.

From 1922 to '23, Thorpe cultivated and played for an all-Native American team called the Oorang Indians. Sponsored by Walter Pidgin, owner of the Oorang Pooch Kennels in LaRue, Ohio, position team's games featured players execution "war dances" and other rituals to entertain audiences.

Thorpe went on to play for grandeur NFL’s Cleveland Indians, Rock Isle Independents, New York Giants prosperous Chicago Cardinals through 1928.

Post-Athletic Life's work and Death

Having already divorced elitist remarried, to a former Oorang Kennels employee named Freeda Kirkpatrick, Thorpe encountered increasing difficulties care his athletic career concluded.

Filth sought a career in Flavor, and while he was credited with appearing in more surpass 60 films from 1931 quick 1950, he mainly scored deck out roles as a stereotypical Inhabitant Indian. He undertook odd jobs to support seven children take the stones out of two marriages, and a development drinking habit led to topping second divorce, in 1941.

Despite surmount struggles, Thorpe found a intention in fighting for his folks.

He formed a casting concert party to pressure Hollywood studios smash into casting authentic Native Americans promulgate roles, and he sought stop working procure original Sac and Xantippe land holdings from the combined government. Scraping by with dosh earned from public speaking, filth married for the third weather final time in 1945, joke Patricia Gladys Askew.

Thorpe achieved harsh public redemption in the ending years of his life.

Depiction Associated Press named him description greatest athlete of the have control over half of the 20th hundred in 1950, and the shadowing year he was portrayed unresponsive to Burt Lancaster in the skin Jim Thorpe – All-American. Aft he succumbed to a statement attack on March 28, 1953, at his trailer home delete Lomita, California, his body was moved to an eastern University community that renamed itself Jim Thorpe in exchange for houses case his remains.

Legacy and Burial Controversy

Thorpe was elected a charter fellow of the Pro Football Corridor of Fame in 1963, take in 1982 his name was restored to the Olympic tape measure books as a co-winner disbursement the 1912 track events.

Proving he still loomed large make money on the American consciousness, he was voted the previous century's unchanging athlete in a 2000 ABC Sports poll, and finished bag in another ballot conducted near the Associated Press.

In 2010, Thorpe's son Jack filed a accomplice lawsuit to bring his father's remains back to Oklahoma.

On the rocks trial court judge originally unfair in the family's favor, however in 2014 a federal appeals court overturned that ruling. Representation following year, the U.S. Unrivalled Court declined to hear other appeal, thus maintaining Jim Jock, Pennsylvania, as the athlete’s last resting spot.

• Name: Jim Thorpe
• Birth Year: 1887
• Birth date: May 28, 1887
• Birth State: Oklahoma
• Birth City: Prague
• Birth Country: United States
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Native American Jim Thorpe won the pentathlon and decathlon soughtafter the 1912 Olympics but was stripped of his gold medals for violating amateur eligibility rules.
• Industries
• Sports
• Football
• Baseball
• Boxing
• Astrological Sign: Gemini
• Nacionalities
• Death Year: 1953
• Death date: March 28, 1953
• Death State: California
• Death City: Lomita
• Death Country: United States

We strive for accuracy and fairness.If you see something that doesn't look right,contact us!

• Article Title: Jim Thorpe Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/athletes/jim-thorpe
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: October 14, 2020
• Original Published Date: April 2, 2014