November 25th, 2011 
tamra 
Jim Thorpe: He was born near Prague in 1888 of Pottawatomi, Sac and Fox, and white ancestry.
By RANDY KREHBIEL World Staff Writer
Published: 11/25/2011 2:26 AM
A lawsuit to return Jim Thorpe’s remains to his two living children and the Sac and Fox Nation can go forward, a federal judge in Scranton, Pa., has ruled.
On Wednesday, District Judge A. Richard Caputo denied a motion to dismiss the case by the borough of Jim Thorpe, Pa., which essentially bought the famed athlete’s remains from his widow in 1953.
“This is really a significant decision,” said Stephen Ward, the Tulsa attorney for brothers William and Richard Thorpe, Jim Thorpe’s last surviving children.
Specifically, Caputo ruled that the Thorpes’ claim to their father’s remains could go forward under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. The law has most commonly been applied to American Indian remains held by museums, but Ward said it was not meant to be limited to such cases.
“There is at least one other case in which NAGPRA has been used in moving a modern grave,” he said. “Overall, there have been very few cases brought under NAGPRA, probably fewer than 25, so this decision is significant in this general field.”
Thorpe was born near Prague in 1888 of Pottawatomi, Sac and Fox, and white ancestry. He first achieved fame as a multisport and ballroom dancing star at the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania.
Thorpe won the 1912 Olympic pentathlon and decathlon gold medals and the designation of “World’s Greatest Athlete.” He later played professional football and baseball but found success fleeting. His Olympic medals were taken away in 1913 after it was revealed that he had played minor league baseball for $2 a game.
By the 1930s he was bouncing from one job to another, working as a movie extra, construction worker, bouncer and even sailor. Married three times, he died virtually penniless in 1953.
His third wife, Patricia Askew Thorpe, made an agreement with the towns of Mauch Chunk and East Mauch Chunk, Pa., for them to buy Thorpe’s remains and erect a monument to him. The two towns also agreed to reorganize under the name Jim Thorpe, Pa.
It is that agreement that William and Richard Thorpe, sons of Jim Thorpe’s second wife, Freeda Kirkpatrick Thorpe, are seeking to overturn. William and Richard’s brother, Jack Thorpe, who died earlier this year, originally brought the suit.
Ward said the Thorpe brothers are trying to honor their father’s request to be buried in the old Sac and Fox Nation in present-day east-central Oklahoma.
http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=11&articleid=20111125_16_A20_CUTLIN874713
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