(Photos source: Jim Thorpe Birthday Celebration, May 19 & 20, 2012, Jim Thorpe, PA – JimThorpe.org)

“Jacobus Franciscus “Jim” Thorpe (Sac and Fox (Sauk): Wa-Tho-Huk) (May 28, 1888 – March 28, 1953) was one of the finest athletes ever to take any field. He won Olympic gold medals in the 1912 pentathlon and decathlon, played American football at the collegiate and professional levels, and also played professional baseball and basketball.

“In 1950, The Associated Press named Thorpe the greatest athlete of the first half of the twentieth century. In 1999, he was ranked third on their list of top athletes of the 20th century.” – (SOURCE: JimThorpe.org)

(Olympian Jim Thorpe is at the center of a battle between the Pennsylvania town that gave him a resting place, and his sons, who want to bury him in Oklahoma. – The Washington Post)

As some Pennsylvanians know, the great Jim Thorpe gained enormous popularity as an athlete at the Carlisle Indian School in Carlisle.

“The Carlisle Indian School football team was the most dynamic, dazzling football program in all of college football by 1907.  Coached by Gleen Scobey “Pop” Warner, and led by future Olympic champion Jim Thorpe, the Carlisle Indian School revolutionized the game, pioneering the forward pass, among other changes that turned football into the modern day, high-flying game you see today.”

And some Pennsylvanians know there’s a town named Jim Thorpe. Some know that the town is somewhere in the “coal regions” northeast of here somewhere around Lehighton. Some know that Jim Thorpe’s gravesite is in Jim Thorpe, PA.

But Jim Thorpe, arguably the greatest athlete of his era (or other eras) did not live in Jim Thorpe, PA.

Jim Thorpe’s sons, “have asked, pleaded and two years ago sued in federal court to force the borough to right their stepmother’s wrong. They want to bury their father where he wanted: in or near the Thorpe family plot on the Great Plains of rural Oklahoma, about a mile from where he was born.”

This quote (above) comes from this article that appeared in yesterday’s Washington Post magazine, “Battle over athlete Jim Thorpe’s burial site continues.”

The article, written by Neeley Tucker, begins:

“PRAGUE, Okla. — Funerals, like weddings, can be messy family affairs. Not everything goes according to plan. Emotions run high. Even pleasant people can be tense.

“Few people who met Patsy Thorpe — third and most difficult spouse of Jim Thorpe, that primordial American athlete — accused her of being pleasant, in particular Thorpe’s children from previous marriages.

“So when she pulled up to her husband’s in-progress Native American funeral service at a farm near here on the night of April 12, 1953, with a hearse and a highway patrolman in tow, everybody knew something bad was about to happen.

“What transpired, however, is perhaps unmatched in the history of American funeral proceedings.”

The Jim Thorpe Rest in Peace Website states: “The story of why Jim Thorpe’s body is buried in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania is a long and convoluted one. In an interview conducted for his biography, Jim Thorpe: World’s Greatest Athlete, Robert W. Wheeler quotes independent oilman and publisher and editor of the Shawnee News-Star, Ross Porter, as he explains what happened in 1953.”

And here is where you’ll read more about how Jim Thorpe’s body made the trek from his native Oklahoma to Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania.