Athletic Biography of James Frances Thorpe
On the morning of May 28, 1888, one of the most versatile, and arguably the greatest of athletes was born in a one-room cabin made of cottonwood and hickory, on the Sac and Fox Indian Reservation located in Prague, Oklahoma. His name was Wa-tho-huck, which means "Bright Path" , in the Native American language spoken by the Sac and Fox Tribe. His father was Hiram P. Thorpe an Irish trapper, and his mother was No-ten-o-quah, and Indian member of the Thunder Clan of Chief Black Hawk, better known as Charlotte Thorpe. It was a customary tradition for Native Americans to name their children after something seen just before giving birth or even just after giving birth. Since the first thing Wa-tho-huck’s mother saw, shortly after giving birth at 6:30 in the morning, was the Sun rising over a walkway leading to the cabin, hence the name "Bright Path." Because Hiram Thorpe wasn’t a full-blooded Indian, Wa-tho-huck needed to have a name given to him at the time he was christened. They agreed on the name James Frances Thorpe, or as many came to know him as, Jim Thorpe.
Jim wasn’t the first child of the family, in fact he had an older brother named George and a twin brother named Charlie. George was nearly seven years older than Jim, so the only person that Jim had to play with was Charlie. Although Jim and Charlie looked very much dissimilar, they soon began to show similar interests. They took after their father in the fact that they both enjoyed such activities as hunting, trapping, and fishing; and as the years went on, they became inseparable. Jim also had a younger sister named Mary, and a younger brother named Eddie.
Hiram Thorpe was undoubtedly the most gifted athlete on the Sac and Fox Reservation. Nearly every weekend, competitions such as, wrestling, swimming, high-jumping, and broad-jumping, were held, and every weekend. Families from all over the Reservation and area would come to watch these events, and nearly every weekend they saw Hiram win. Perhaps this talent and love of athletic competition was inherited by Jim, or perhaps by watching his father compete, Jim became so compelled to make his father proud, that he developed a love for competition. Either way, Jim’s passion to compete helped him in the years to come.
At the age of six and a half Hiram enrolled Jim and Charlie at the Sac and Fox Indi...
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...test Athlete And Football Player in the First Half of the Twentieth Century. In 1951 Warner Brothers released, Jim Thorpe-All American, a movie about the great athlete’s life. This was truly a great tribute to his dedication on and off the field.
In November of 1951, Jim noticed an infection on his lower lip. He went to a hospital in Philadelphia and had it checked out, and found out that it was cancer. Luckily, the doctor’s were able to remove it, without any aftereffects. Ten months later however, he suffered his second heart attack, but he shocked the doctors when after only seventy-two hours, he sat up and walked out of the hospital under his own power. Jim however was unable to conquer his third heart attack which occurred on March 28, 1953. This heart attack was massive and it occurred while Jim was laying in bed. Not even the doctors could save him. The unconquerable athlete had been conquered for the first time, and all that was left of him was the legend that he had striven so hard to achieve. On the front of Jim’s granite memorial is engraved:
"SIR, YOU ARE THE GREATEST ATHLETE IN THE WORLD!"
KING GUSTAV, STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN
1888 JIM THORPE 1953
“The 1910 Jeffries-Johnson Fight and Its Impact” was by far my favorite reading from the text this semester, which is the main reason for my choosing of this topic. Throughout this article, I found it to be incredibly intriguing how detailed it was on the struggles that Johnson went through. Discussing the difficult experiences he had as a rising black athlete and then to end up with a white woman who, to many, could or could not have been considered a prostitute. All of the events during Johnson’s life make him such an amazing person and a very interesting athlete to learn more about.
There can be no question that sport and athletes seem to be considered less than worthy subjects for writers of serious fiction, an odd fact considering how deeply ingrained in North American culture sport is, and how obviously and passionately North Americans care about it as participants and spectators. In this society of diverse peoples of greatly varying interests, tastes, and beliefs, no experience is as universal as playing or watching sports, and so it is simply perplexing how little adult fiction is written on the subject, not to mention how lightly regarded that little which is written seems to be. It should all be quite to the contrary; that our fascination and familiarity with sport makes it a most advantageous subject for the skilled writer of fiction is amply demonstrated by Mark Harris.
...tudents, American slaves, and 1890’s immigrant children, in similar ways. Sport is often vital to the autonomy, freedom, and pride of its participants especially in regards to the Native American students at boarding schools. Even though individuals may have thought that the schools were exploiting the talents of the Native American students, which they may have been, no one considered how the students actually viewed sport at the time. There often needs to be less preoccupation with political correctness and more focus on how certain actions actually affect the ones involved. Even if the schools were exploiting the students by sport, sports should never even been taken away from the Native American students of boarding skills due to the fact that it was sport that often was allowing them to develop; not only as a Native American, but as an individual as well.
Jim Thorpe had a very rough life. It started from the day he was born to the day he died. Jim was born on an Indian reservation in Prague, Oklahoma. It was the year of 1888, on May 28th, this phenomenal athlete was born. But, what most people don't know is Jim had a twin brother. His twin brother’s name was Charlie Thorpe. His parents had Indian heritage, but were part European and Native American. His mother’s name was Hiram Thorpe and his father’s name was Charlotte Vieux(Biography.com). Now, as a child, Jim would have had a total of ten siblings, but six of them died during childbirth, so that left him with four. One thing his family took great pride in is they were related to the great war chief named Black Hawk of the sac and fox tribe (“Jim Thorpe one of the greatest athletes of all time”). Now, the original tribe was from lands near and in Michigan. The government moved the tribe to a reservation just like many other Indian tribe’s. Now the sac and fox Indian tribes chief's name was Black Hawk. One reason he and his family took great pride in this Indian chief that many people have never heard was, black Hawk tried fighting off the government and started to succeeded but the government’s weapons and military started taking over and beating their tribe and the attempt failed. But many people of the tribe still thought of him as a hero j...
" Doris R. Corbett WaynePatterson." THE SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF SPORT. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Dec. 2013.
From Beethoven, to the rap artists of today, music has developed from classical masterpieces to garbage that glorifies negative behaviour. Rap, or gangster rap as it is commonly known, is a form of music that glamorizes thug life. This glamorization is destroying our communities and urban centers. Youth especially are influenced by this because they start to see the lifestyle described in rap as expensive cars, gorgeous women, and jewellery. The media tells them about these things but conveniently leaves out the fact a rap stars lifestyle is actually about drugs, violence, gangs, crime, and the objectification of women. If youth knew that most rap stars are actually prison inmates or living off welfare, they probably would not be so keen on adapting rap culture and would focus on getting an education instead. The media d...
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Hoberman, John M. 1997. Darwin's athletes: how sport has damaged Black America and preserved the myth of race. Boston, Mass: Houghton Mifflin Co
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