The Best of the Athletic Boys: The White Man's Impact on Jim Thorpe

This is a biography of athlete Wa-Tho-Huck, better known as Jim Thorpe. It focues on his formative years and subsequent gridiron fame. Being of partial Native American heritage, Thorpe grew up in the Sac and Fox nation in Oklahoma. He was sent from his reservation to the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania where he excelled in sports. A gifted athlete in baseball and track, Thorpe made headlines for as a breakaway runner for Pop Warner's football teams. He won the decathlon and pentathlon at the 1912 Olympics but was later stripped of his medals for having played a summer of semi-pro baseball. The man voted the ""Athlete of the Half-Century" lingered on in professional baseball (NY Giants; Cincinnati Reds) and football (Canton Bulldogs) before ending up with a "dismal stretch of odd jobs, unpaid bills, bar fights, and broken homes."… (more)