Grace Francis Thorpe was popularly known as an American environmentalist and Native rights activist. She served with the Women’s Army Corps and received a Bronze Star Medal for her service as a Corporal in the New Guinea campaign.
She attended the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and the Antioch School of Law and went on to become a tribal district court judge. In 1999, she received a Nuclear-Free Future Award for her opposition to storing toxic and radioactive waste on indigenous land.
Her father was a well-known American football player and Olympic athlete Jim Thorpe. The Grace F. Thorpe Collection is held by the National Museum of the American Indian Archives Center.
Grace Thorpe’s cause of death: What happened to Jim Thorpe’s daughter?
Grace Thorpe lived for 86 years and died on April 1, 2008, from complications following a heart attack. She is remembered for her military, legal, and activist legacy.
She was born on December 10, 1921, to her parents James (Jim) Francis Thorpe (Sac and Fox), and Iva Margaret Miller. Her tribal heritage included Potawatomi, Kickapoo, Sac and Fox, and Menominee ancestry, and she was a direct descendant of Sac and Fox chief Black Hawk.
She was born in Yale, Oklahoma in the only house her father ever owned. Now a museum, it is fondly known as the “Jim Thorpe House” and can be visited by tourists year-round.
Grace was the youngest of four; her oldest sister Gail Margaret was born in 1917, her brother James in 1918, and her sister Charlotte Marie in 1919. Her brother James died from polio before reaching adolescence.
She got married to Lieutenant Fred W. Seely in June 1946. Together they had two children, Dagmar Thorpe, and Paul Thorpe, both born in Japan.
The couple divorced in 1950, and Grace and her children left Japan and returned to the United States to live in Pearl River, New York, near her father’s home. In 1967, Grace moved to Arizona and began to focus on her activism.
Source: nflfaqs.com
