The American athlete and Olympic gold medalist Jim Thorpe was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1963, one of seventeen players in the charter class.
Thorpe is memorialized in the Pro Football Hall of Fame rotunda with a larger-than-life statue. He was also inducted into halls of fame for college football, American Olympic teams, and the national track and field competition.
Thorpe became one of the inductees in the first induction ceremony held by the National Native American Hall of Fame in 2018. The fitness center and a hall at Haskell Indian Nations University are named in honor of Thorpe.
Jim Thorpe’s health problems: What disease did Jim Thorpe suffer from?
Jim Thorpe was suffering from a heart problem and in early 1953, he went into heart failure for the third time while dining with Patricia in their home in Lomita, California. He was briefly revived by artificial respiration and spoke to those around him, but lost consciousness shortly afterward.
The American athlete and Olympic gold medalist died from heart failure on March 28, 1953. He was 64. Associated Press named him the USA’s greatest athlete and American football player of the first half of the 20th century, while an ABC Sports poll in 2000 ranked him as the best American athlete of the century.
He was born south of Belmont, near Prague, Oklahoma, on May 28, 1888. He was the son of Hiran P. Thorpe, of Irish and Sac-Fox Indian descent, and Charlotte View, of Potawatomi and Kickapoo descent. He grew up with five siblings, although his twin brother, Charlie, died at the age of nine.
Jim’s athletic abilities showed at a very early age when he learned to ride horses and swim at the age of three. Thorpe first attended the Sac-Fox Indian Agency school near Tecumseh, Oklahoma, before being sent to the Haskell Indian School near Lawrence, Kansas, in 1898.
Source: nflfaqs.com
