Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe

This account of Jim Thorpe's life is thorough and evenhanded. It was disheartening to see how athletes are routinely taken advantage of on one hand and worshipped on the other. Every dirty trick played on them is excused in the name of whatever sport they participate in. Throw in a large amount of racism and greed and it's a toxic mess. There are a lot of dirty hands involved, too many to mention. I found Mr. Thorpe a decent and sympathetic character, defects and all. He took hard knocks and kept moving on without self pity. A lot of misconceptions were cleared up about Pop Warner. He was not the wonderful coach people made him out to be, especially at the Carlisle Indian School. In many ways he was an underhanded and distasteful creep. His bad behavior was excused because he was a coach in a popular sport. Just another way of defending the indefensible.

Author David Maraniss writes that Jim Thorpe is the "quintessential underdog" who became the world's greatest athlete. He was an Olympic gold medalist in track and field, a football All-American, a major league baseball player, a gifted swimmer and ice skater.His story is one of perseverance versus the odds. Born on a Sac and Fox Indian reservation in 1887, Thorpe, whose Indian name was Wa-tho-Huk (meaning Path Lit by Lightning) arrived at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in 1904. He was subjected to cruel, crude and dehumanizing acculturation methods, part of the school's philosophy to "Kill the Indian, save the man."Thorpe would spend the rest of his life divided between Indian and White worlds.After his athletic career ended, he was "troubled by alcohol, broken marriages, deferred dreams, lost opportunities and financial distress," according to Maraniss. When Thorpe died at age 65 on March 28, 1953, his wife didn't have enough money to pay the undertaker.Thorpe thrived playing football for Pop Warner at the Carlisle school. In 1908, Thorpe was described as "having the speed or a sprinter and the agility of a cat." Later on, a player said tackling Thorpe was like "trying to catch a shadow." While Carlisle was a football juggernaut, some of Warner's methods were questionable. He was suspected of recruiting players, paying them and using overaged non-students.In 1909, Thorpe played minor league baseball in Rocky Mount, N.C. He played under his own name. This stint ended up costing him his Olympic medals.He starred in the 1912 Olympics at Stockholm, earning the title as the world's greatest athlete.Maraniss writes that Thorpe became "a mythical figure who was gazed upon as a curiosity the rest of his life. The myth grew over the years."When Thorpe's minor league baseball career came to light, Warner denied knowing about it. Maraniss, however, says it's very likely Warner and James Sullivan, secretary of the American Athletic Union, knew about it. Thorpe was stripped of his Olympic medals 180 days after the event. The rules stated that all protests had to be filed within 30 days of the conclusion of the Olympics. Most Americans expressed sympathy for Thorpe and denounced the hypocrisy of supposed amateurism.In 1913, Thorpe joined the New York Giants baseball team under manager John McGraw. Thorpe had a lackluster 6-year career in the majors, but Maraniss makes a strong case of how McGraw misused him. Thorpe was much more successful later in the minors. Perhaps, if he had started in the minors, he would have been more successful in the majors.Thorpe began playing minor league baseball in the summer, minor league football in the fall and winter and barnstorming whenever he could. He was akin to an athletic migrant worker, traveling across the country. At age 39, he was still playing baseball and football. As his athletic ability declined, so did his financial health.He was drinking more, borrowing money from friends and having trouble finding a job. He and his third wife, Patsy, had a lot of dreams, but most of them were short-lived. Her goal, unrealized, was to make $1 million for Jim, who ended up playing bit parts in more than 70 movies over 20 years.When the movie "Jim Thorpe: All-American" was released in 1951, it didn't produce the windfall they had hoped. Less than two years later, Thorpe was dead.Maraniss, a great biographer and writer, elevates the Jim Thorpe story beyond myth and into a classic.

Whew! It took quite a bit of time for me to pioneer my way through this book. By the time I hit page 400 I began skimming parts of the book because of its length and way too much detail. As one reviewer posted he felt the story could have been told just as well had it been shorter. To me 400 pages would have been sufficient and the emphasis on detail caused me to lose some interest. I can't imagine a future attempt on a book of Jim Thorpe to be more thorough than this one.Jim Thorpe's unique athletic ability took place when he pole vaulted in his overalls when not even having taken part in any athletic activity. A feeling of wonder of all wonders, "What have we here?" His experiences at the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania was one in which the school wanted to take the Indian out of the individual and change them into a White man's culture. Thorpe's football coach at the school was none other than the legendary Pop Warner who the youth football program is named after. Author Maraniss doesn't speak very favorably of Pop Warner who sprouted profanities at his players and claimed to be unaware of Thorpe's taking part in a few minor league baseball games during the summer months to earn some money. This eventually resulted in Thorpe losing the trophies he won at the 1912 Olympic game held in Stockholm, Sweden. It wasn't that Thorpe was trying to hide the fact that he played some minor league games since he didn't even attempt to change his name when he played. The king of Sweden told him, "You are the greatest athlete in the world." Those who finished second to Thorpe in the Olympics refused to accept the medals that Thorpe had won. Avery Brundage was a fellow athlete with Thorpe at Carlisle and as long as he lived Brundage, now in charge of the Olympics, refused to assist in helping Thorpe's family in having the medals restored. Only after the death of Thorpe and Brundage were replicas of Thorpe's medals restored to the family but the bronze pentathlon bust and silver decathlon Viking ship that Thorpe won remained at the Olympic headquarters in Switzerland.Jim Thorpe made an attempt at major league baseball with the New York Giants under the legendary John McGraw. Author Maraniss correctly feels that Thorpe's baseball career was backwards because rather than spend time in a lower league to learn his craft he was forced to spend most of his time on the bench as a spectator and, I might add, as a drawing card.Following Thorpe's death in 1953 following several heart attacks controversy took place as to where Thorpe's remains were to be buried. Children wanted him buried in his native Oklahoma while his third wife chose an area of Pennsylvania Thorpe had never visited.Jim Thorpe reminded me of a poem written by A. E. Housman in which some athletes became "runners whom renown outran and the name died before the man." I can't imagine the amount of time author David Maraniss spent researching this book. It certainly had to have been a Herculean undertaking.

Brilliant storytelling though a little depressing in the last half of his life (that's not the author's fault - it is what it is). If only Pop Warner had claimed Thorpe remained an amateur during his minor league baseball days doing so at Warner's request so Thorpe could play football at Carlisle in the future. He could have said all proceeds received were used to cover Thorpe's accommodation, travel and food. It wouldn't have been true but it might have confused the matter enough to have blown over as an issue. Instead he threw Thorpe under the bus by admitting the athlete's guilt and the result was foretold.