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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production

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Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm Tracy Vie Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. Today we

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Speaker 1: have the third part of what I think is our

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Speaker 1: first ever three parter on the show. There may have

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Speaker 1: been three parters by briar hosts that I'm not remembering,

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Speaker 1: but for Holly and me, it's the first sort of

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Speaker 1: trilogy of podcast. In part one, we talked about Jim

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Speaker 1: Thorpe's early life and his upbringing in boarding schools for

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Speaker 1: Native American children, including his time on the track and

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Speaker 1: football teams at Carlisle Indian Industrial School, and then in

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Speaker 1: part two we talked about his just incredible performance at

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Speaker 1: the nineteen twelve Summer Olympic Games in Stockholm, and then

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Speaker 1: how he was later stripped of the medals that he

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Speaker 1: had earned in those games. And are concluding episode, we're

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Speaker 1: going to talk about his time the professional athlete and

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Speaker 1: then his life after the end of his career as

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Speaker 1: an athlete, including two weiss of the story that have

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Speaker 1: just tragically continued for a long time after his death.

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Speaker 1: One aspect of it I find particularly heartbreaking, which we

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Speaker 1: will get to After being stripped of his Olympic medals,

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Speaker 1: Jim Thorpe publicly tried to downplay things, saying he knew

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Speaker 1: that he had earned them, but really he was heartbroken

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Speaker 1: at the loss of his medals and the fact that

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Speaker 1: he was now barred from being an amateur athlete. He

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Speaker 1: started trying to figure out what he was going to

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Speaker 1: do next after the Olympics. Thorpe had turned down offers

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Speaker 1: to box and to appear on vaudeville. After his medals

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Speaker 1: and amateur status were revoked, he started looking for opportunities

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Speaker 1: as a professional baseball player. In Thorpe signed with the

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Speaker 1: New York Giants, which was the top ranked team in

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Speaker 1: the league. His contract was for six thousand dollars a

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Speaker 1: year for three years. He had never been as strong

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Speaker 1: at baseball as he had been in football or track

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Speaker 1: and field, and there were also some rumors that he

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Speaker 1: was being brought onto the team basically to bring in

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Speaker 1: fans and not to actually play. Running alongside that was

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Speaker 1: the idea that the expense of paying him was going

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Speaker 1: to be worth it as long as his presence on

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Speaker 1: the team sold tickets. One of the reasons that Thorpe

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Speaker 1: had wanted to qualify for the Olympics was that he

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Speaker 1: wanted to prove that he was worthy of marrying Iva Miller,

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Speaker 1: also called Ivy, who was his longtime sweetheart from Carlyle.

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Speaker 1: Ivy's background is a little bit complicated. She had been

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Speaker 1: born in Cherokee Country and her mother was reportedly part Cherokee,

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Speaker 1: but there's no evidence to back that up. Her father

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Speaker 1: seems to have fabricated an indigenous ancestry for her and

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Speaker 1: her siblings so that he could enroll them in a

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Speaker 1: boarding school after their mother died. It is not entirely

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Speaker 1: clear how much or what indigenous ancestry she had, if any,

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Speaker 1: and whether or not Jim knew about any of this.

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Speaker 1: Jim and Iva got married after the nineteen thirteen World Series,

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Speaker 1: which the Giants lost to the Philadelphia Athletics four games

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Speaker 1: to one. They got married at the Catholic Chapel that

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Speaker 1: they had attended while they were at Carlisle, and their

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Speaker 1: honeymoon was the Giants White Sox World Tour, in which

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Speaker 1: the Giants and the White Sox traveled west across the

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Speaker 1: United States and then to Japan, with stops all over Asia, Europe,

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Speaker 1: and Northern Africa. Jim and Iva would go on to

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Speaker 1: have four children, Jim Junior, Gayl, Charlotte, and Grace. Back

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Speaker 1: at Carlisle, students were petitioning for an investigation into poor

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Speaker 1: conditions at the school. The results of this investigation were appalling,

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Speaker 1: detailing deprivation, beatings, and virtually the entire school being quote

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Speaker 1: made subservient to football and athletics. The report also leveled

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Speaker 1: numerous charges against Pop Warner, who had been the coach

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Speaker 1: of the athletics there and one of the people who

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Speaker 1: really encouraged Jim Thorpe, from abusive treatment of players to

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Speaker 1: financial corruption. Warner denied these charges, claiming that they were

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Speaker 1: the work of a vendetta by disgruntled former athletes. He

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Speaker 1: left Carlisle and took a job with the University of Pittsburgh.

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Speaker 1: The Carlisle School closed in nineteen I think this report

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Speaker 1: is like it's indicative of one of the truths about Carlisle,

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Speaker 1: which is that Jim, as an athlete and other athletes

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Speaker 1: there were shielded from some of the worst things about

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Speaker 1: the school in their position of being athletes, And like

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Speaker 1: this report brought a lot of that to like for

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Speaker 1: people who didn't know about it. On December fifteenth of

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Speaker 1: nineteen sixteen, Thorpe got a letter that he was now

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Speaker 1: qualified to be a US citizen and closed was the

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Speaker 1: deed for his land allotment. As we talked about earlier,

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Speaker 1: there was a whole process where if somebody had been

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Speaker 1: able to maintain a land allotment for a long enough time,

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Speaker 1: they were qualified to become a citizen. That same year,

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Speaker 1: he also started playing and coaching the Canton bull Dogs,

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Speaker 1: which is a professional football team based in Canton, Ohio.

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Speaker 1: So he was playing professional baseball and football at the

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Speaker 1: same time. There their seasons didn't entirely overlap, but he

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Speaker 1: was going from one professional sport to another, and then

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Speaker 1: going back to Oklahoma to support himself and his family,

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Speaker 1: primarily by hunting when neither of those sports was in season.

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Speaker 1: As all of this was happening, Thorpe was still under

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Speaker 1: contract to the New York Giants, although his baseball career

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Speaker 1: involved being repeatedly sent down to the minor leagues or

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Speaker 1: loaned out to other teams. When the Selective Service Act

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Speaker 1: of nineteen seventeen was passed to allow the United States

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Speaker 1: to conscript an army for World War One, many Native

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Speaker 1: American men registered, and about twelve thousand served in the

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Speaker 1: military during the war. Because he was married and supporting

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Speaker 1: his wife and children, Thorpe was exempt. Apparently. The Giants

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Speaker 1: manager John J. McGraw also discouraged Thorpe from volunteering, arguing

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Speaker 1: that as an internationally famous fleet he could become a target.

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Speaker 1: In nineteen eighteen, Jim and Iva's son, Jim Jr. Died

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Speaker 1: of polio, and it was only three Jim was obviously bereft,

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Speaker 1: absolutely grief stricken. People who knew him said that he

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Speaker 1: was just never the same afterward. But McGraw really did

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Speaker 1: not have a lot of patience for Thorpe's lack of

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Speaker 1: focus on the field in the aftermath of his son's death.

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Speaker 1: He already thought that Thorpe was too prone to goofing around.

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Speaker 1: Thorpe's nickname back at Carlisle had actually been libbling, which

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Speaker 1: meant coursing around. Jim's relationship with Iva had already been

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Speaker 1: kind of strained over the issue of alcohol. Jim's drinking

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Speaker 1: was comparable to that of his teammates, but Iva would

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Speaker 1: have much preferred him to be a teetotaler. In the

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Speaker 1: wake of Jim Junior's death, both Jim's relationship with his

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Speaker 1: wife and his performance at work really started to suffer. Then,

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Speaker 1: in nineteen nineteen, Thorpe left the New York Giants. Report

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Speaker 1: worded Lely McGraw had called him a dumb Indian after

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Speaker 1: he missed a signal, and Thorpe, outraged, had chased him

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Speaker 1: down the field until his teammates intervened. Thorpe was traded

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Speaker 1: to the Boston Braves, and he played with them for

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Speaker 1: one season before going back to the minor leagues. Thorpe's

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Speaker 1: career in professional football was going somewhat better, though. The

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Speaker 1: American Professional Football Association was formed in nineteen twenty and

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Speaker 1: Thorpe was named its first president. This organization would later

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Speaker 1: become the National Football League, or the NFL, so you'll

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Speaker 1: see a lot of times Jim Thorpe was the first

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Speaker 1: president of the NFL. In the nineteen twenties, Thorpe also

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Speaker 1: started to move from playing and coaching in existing teams

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Speaker 1: to starting new ones. In nineteen two, Thorpe helped Canton

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Speaker 1: fan and dog breeder Walter Lingo start the All Indigenous

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Speaker 1: Urrang Indians football team. As part of this arrangement, Lingo

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Speaker 1: paid Thorpe to start and coach the team and to

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Speaker 1: manage his kennel for five hundred dollars a week. This

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Speaker 1: may sound like an out of the blue arrangement, but

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Speaker 1: Thorpe had a lot of years of experience training and

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Speaker 1: caring for hunting dogs. In addition to so many other

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Speaker 1: things we've talked about him being good at, he was

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Speaker 1: very good with animals. Carlisle Indian Industrial School had aggressively

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Speaker 1: recruited and then trained many of the best indigenous football

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Speaker 1: players in the United States, had sort of sucked up

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Speaker 1: all of the football talent, and then it had closed

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Speaker 1: down four years before all of this happened, So a

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Speaker 1: lot of the players on this team were actually older

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Speaker 1: than Thorpe was. Although the team did not do particularly

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Speaker 1: well in its first season, Lingo seemed to enjoy it

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Speaker 1: and funded it for a nineteen twenty three season as well.

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Speaker 1: In nineteen twenty three, Jim and Iva separated. Their marriage

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Speaker 1: had just never recovered from the death of Jim Jr.

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Speaker 1: They legally divorced in n that same year. Jim remarried

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Speaker 1: to FRIEDA. Kirkpatrick, who was eighteen years his junior and

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Speaker 1: who he had started getting to know as his marriage

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Speaker 1: to Iva was crumbling. They went on to have four sons,

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Speaker 1: carl Bill, Richard, John, who was known as Jack. Jim's

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Speaker 1: relationships with Iva and Frieda, and with the children that

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Speaker 1: he fathered during those two marriages could be a little complicated,

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Speaker 1: as was the case with Iva. Frieda did not really

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Speaker 1: approve of Jim's drinking, which was kind of hit or miss.

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Speaker 1: There were times when he gave it up, but there

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Speaker 1: were times that it became heavier as their marriage went on.

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Speaker 1: As a professional athlete playing two different sports, he was

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Speaker 1: also away from home a lot when his children were young.

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Speaker 1: His grandson Michael D. Koehler, writing in an article and

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Speaker 1: Educational Digest, wrote that his mother, Charlotte, had sometimes felt

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Speaker 1: like Thorpe didn't even know her name. At the same time, though,

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Speaker 1: Thorpe's children really seemed devoted to him, although that devotion

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Speaker 1: could take somewhat different forms, which we will get to

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Speaker 1: in a bit. In ninety six, Thorpe played his final

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Speaker 1: season with the Canton Bulldogs. In seven, he played and

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Speaker 1: coached a season with the all Indigenous World Famous Indians

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Speaker 1: basketball team. By this point, though his career is a

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Speaker 1: professional athlete was really winding down. He played his last

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Speaker 1: professional football games, which ended his time as a pro

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Speaker 1: athlete in Thorpe was about forty at this point, which

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Speaker 1: would be a little older for a pro athlete, like

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Speaker 1: it's hard on your body, but it also wasn't entirely

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Speaker 1: what he was planning. In nineteen twenty nine, the Carnegie

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Speaker 1: Foundation published a report called American College Athletics, which revealed

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Speaker 1: all kinds of issues. There were payments to players and

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Speaker 1: secret funding and just corruption in college athletics. This report

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Speaker 1: framed college athletics as a threat to education, and the

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Speaker 1: suspicions that it raised trickled over into professional sports as well.

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Speaker 1: In the ninety nine stock market crash and the Great

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Speaker 1: Depression also seriously reduced the number of opportunities for pro

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Speaker 1: athletes and coaches. So regardless of what Thorpe may have

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Speaker 1: wanted to do as an athlete at this point, there

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Speaker 1: just were not many opportunities in professional sports at all

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Speaker 1: for him to try to pursue. We're going to talk

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Speaker 1: about Jim Thorpe's life after professional sports. After we first

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Speaker 1: pause and have a sponsor break between n and Jim.

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Speaker 1: Thorpe did all kinds of jobs to make ends meet.

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Speaker 1: He worked as a laborer and a movie extra. He

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Speaker 1: eventually started a casting agency to advocate for Indigenous actors

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Speaker 1: to be cast as indigenous characters on screen. This, of course,

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Speaker 1: is a little bit of a tangle because a lot

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Speaker 1: of the roles that were available at the time were

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Speaker 1: really heavily stereotyped. But his goal was really to help

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Speaker 1: indigenous actors get a foot in the door in Hollywood,

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Speaker 1: including stuff like helping them find housing, helping make sure

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Speaker 1: they had enough to eat. He was doing a lot

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Speaker 1: of work to just help, especially other Indigenous people in Hollywood.

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Speaker 1: By the mid nineteen thirties, Thorpe was most supporting himself

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Speaker 1: through speaking engagements and acting as well as odd jobs.

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Speaker 1: He appeared in more than seventy films as an actor

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Speaker 1: or an extra. His busiest year on that front was

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Speaker 1: nineteen thirty five, when he appeared in seventeen films. He

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Speaker 1: also sold the rights to his life story to MGM

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Speaker 1: ahead of the nineteen thirty two Olympic Games. He also

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Speaker 1: collaborated with Thomas F. Collison to write Jim Thorpe's History

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Speaker 1: of the Olympics, and then he followed up the publication

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Speaker 1: of that book with public readings and signings. The nineteen

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Speaker 1: thirty two Summer Olympic Games were held in Los Angeles,

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Speaker 1: and that's actually where Thorpe was living at the time,

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Speaker 1: but he couldn't afford a ticket. When his fans heard

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Speaker 1: about this, people offered to buy one for him, and

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Speaker 1: then he wound up getting a press pass for the

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Speaker 1: press box. During opening ceremonies, Vice President Charles Curtis, member

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Speaker 1: of the car Nation and the first person of color

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Speaker 1: to serve as Vice President of the United States, read

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Speaker 1: an article about Thorpe being moved to tears from the

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Speaker 1: press box, and he invited Thorpe to sit in the

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Speaker 1: presidential box. The next day. The crowd gave sorp a

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Speaker 1: standing ovation as he took his seat. As all of

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Speaker 1: this was going on, the United States federal government was

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Speaker 1: really shifting its policies toward Indigenous people. The Wheeler Howard Act,

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Speaker 1: also called the Indian Reorganization Act and later nicknamed the

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Speaker 1: Indian New Deal, was passed in We talked about this

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Speaker 1: a little bit and sort of how it fits into

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Speaker 1: the overall context of of federal Indian law in our

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Speaker 1: two part on the occupation of Alcatraz. This act moved

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Speaker 1: the federal government away from re allotting indigenous lands to

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Speaker 1: individual people and trying to assimilate indigenous people's into white culture.

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Speaker 1: It returned a lot of the so called surplus lands

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Speaker 1: back to indigenous nations, and then also tried to move

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Speaker 1: those nations toward a state of sovereignty rather than Indigenous

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Speaker 1: people being managed by the federal government. This act and

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Speaker 1: fluted provisions for funding as well. If an indigenous nation

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Speaker 1: adopted a written constitution, it was eligible for loans to

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Speaker 1: pay for things like new infrastructure and educational programs. For

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Speaker 1: people in Jim Thorpe's generation, who had spent most of

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Speaker 1: their lives in schools that systematically tried to strip them

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Speaker 1: of their Indigenous identity and force them to assimilate with

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Speaker 1: white culture, and being told that their nation's cultures and

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Speaker 1: practices were inferior to white culture, this shift could be

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Speaker 1: profoundly disorienting. Different tribes also responded really differently to the

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Speaker 1: federal government's encouragement to draft and vote on a new constitution,

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Speaker 1: and there were also differences of opinion within those tribes

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Speaker 1: and nations about how best to move forward. As we

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Speaker 1: say on the show, a lot no group is a

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Speaker 1: monolith and not everybody agreed with all of this. For example,

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Speaker 1: there were members of the Second Fox Nation who wanted

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Speaker 1: to approve a tribal constitution under the terms of the

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Speaker 1: Wheeler Howard Act. Then there were others who just totally

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Speaker 1: distrusted this entire idea you and saw the requirement for

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Speaker 1: a constitution as just another way for the federal government

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Speaker 1: to try to control indigenous nations. It was this faction

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Speaker 1: that recruited Jim Thorpe to advocate on their behalf. Ultimately,

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Speaker 1: the Sac and Fox Nation did approve a new constitution,

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Speaker 1: although it has taken decades and a series of court

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Speaker 1: battles for the nation to put many of the terms

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Speaker 1: of that constitution into practice. In the words of Jim's son, Jack,

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Speaker 1: who was principal chief of the Second Fox Nation for

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Speaker 1: seven years beginning in nineteen eighty, quote, the Sac and

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Speaker 1: Fox went through eleven major lawsuits to exercise our right

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Speaker 1: to control our destiny. We are still in court battles.

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Speaker 1: Jack Thorpe, by the way, died in eleven at the

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Speaker 1: age of seventy three. He will come up again in

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Speaker 1: just a bit. Jim Thorpe's position in the middle of

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Speaker 1: all this was that indigenous people should be able to

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Speaker 1: manage their own affairs rather than being perpetual wards of

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Speaker 1: the United States government, and in his mind, this included

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Speaker 1: things like being able to follow their own religions and

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Speaker 1: observe their own cultural practices. But he also generally disagreed

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Speaker 1: with legislation that was targeted specifically at Indigenous people, even

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Speaker 1: if that legislation was meant to be helpful. He thought

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Speaker 1: that indigenous people experienced lots of hardships, but so did

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Speaker 1: people of other races and ethnicities, so he thought that

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Speaker 1: legislation that set indigenous people apart in some way was

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Speaker 1: really infantilizing and controlling. In nineteen thirty seven, Burton K. Wheeler,

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Speaker 1: who was one of the legislators who the Wheeler Howard

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Speaker 1: Act had been named for, had actually come to oppose it,

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Speaker 1: and he introduced a bill to try to repeal it.

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Speaker 1: Jim Thorpe actually supported this repeal bill, which ultimately failed.

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Speaker 1: In one Jim's wife, Frieda, filed for divorce. As we

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Speaker 1: noted earlier, she had never really approved of Jim's drinking,

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Speaker 1: and while he had given it up at one point,

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Speaker 1: he did still drink from time to time, and as

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Speaker 1: time went on. When he did choose to drink, he

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Speaker 1: then drank more heavily and he was more likely to

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Speaker 1: get into some kind of altercation while under the influence.

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Speaker 1: Frieda also thought that Jim was not careful enough with money,

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Speaker 1: and he also spent long stretches of time away from home.

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Speaker 1: That was something that was normal for him, but it

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Speaker 1: was really a strain on her. Jim did not contest

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Speaker 1: the divorce, Yeah, like he there were there are two

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Speaker 1: things here. One is that even though he had spent

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Speaker 1: so much of his upbringing in boarding schools, like he

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Speaker 1: also grew up in a culture where it was normal,

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Speaker 1: especially for men to like go on prolonged hunts away

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Speaker 1: from the family like that. That was just sort of

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Speaker 1: a thing that happened, and it was not what Frieda

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Speaker 1: was expecting or about at all um. And then the

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Speaker 1: other thing was he gave a lot of money away

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Speaker 1: to people that needed it, especially other indigenous people, and

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Speaker 1: so he would be broke. Were like, why don't you

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Speaker 1: have any money, and it was because he gave it away,

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Speaker 1: And that was like another thing that caused a big

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Speaker 1: rift in between them. When passing through Dearborn, Michigan in

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Speaker 1: the early nineties. On a speaking tour, Thorpe was offered

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Speaker 1: a job as a secure guard at the Ford plant there.

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Speaker 1: He wound up taking it, and then while he was

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Speaker 1: living in Dearborn, he had his first heart attack. Then,

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Speaker 1: during World War Two, he was too old to be

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Speaker 1: accepted into the Armed forces, so he joined the US

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Speaker 1: Merchant Marine. He sailed aboard the USS Southwest Victory, and

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Speaker 1: then when people realized who he was, they got him

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Speaker 1: to start doing things like hospital visits and public appearances

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Speaker 1: to try to boost you know, soldiers and other people's morale,

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Speaker 1: which is a thing that I kind of love. Like.

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Speaker 1: That was not what he had gotten on board for.

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Speaker 1: But as soon as they realized that they had Jim

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Speaker 1: Thorpe on their ship, they were like, WHOA, okay, we

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Speaker 1: gotta work out a way for you to make people

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Speaker 1: feel better. On June two, n Thorpe got married for

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Speaker 1: the third time to Patricia Gladys ask you. She went

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Speaker 1: by Patsy. They got married in Tijuana, and apparently Thorpe

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Speaker 1: was inebriated enough not to remember the ceremony when he

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Speaker 1: woke up next to her the next day. Patsy acted

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Speaker 1: as Thorpe's manager in addition to being his wife, for

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Speaker 1: example getting him to start charging five hundred dollars for

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Speaker 1: speaking engagements rather than doing most of them for free.

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Speaker 1: She also led an attempt to get his Olympic medals

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Speaker 1: restored in the late nineteen forties. But Patsy has also

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Speaker 1: been described as opportunistic, controlling, and even cruel, with expensive

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Speaker 1: tastes that burned through the money that she was helping

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Speaker 1: Jim bring in. Their relationship was often stormy. By this

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Speaker 1: point in his life, Thorpe had become an advocate for

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Speaker 1: athletics programs to try to curb juvenile delinquency, including a

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Speaker 1: plan to develop a Junior Olympics program. He also advocated

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Speaker 1: for the Sac and Fox Nation to be compensated for

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Speaker 1: land that the government had bought in eighteen fourteen, which

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Speaker 1: later turned out to contain oil fields. It's a whole

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Speaker 1: different topic of like land rights versus the mineral rights

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Speaker 1: that are associated with them. After World War Two was over,

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Speaker 1: he started appearing in exhibition games, and also inspired by

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Speaker 1: the All American Girls Professional Baseball League, he started a

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Speaker 1: baseball team for girls. In ninety nine, Weren't Brothers announced

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Speaker 1: that a film was in the works about Jim Thorpe's life.

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Speaker 1: This became the first mainstream Hollywood movie about a living

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Speaker 1: Indigenous person rather than a Western or a movie about

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Speaker 1: an Indigenous historical figure or event. This announcement brought him

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00:20:18,080 --> 00:20:20,879
Speaker 1: a new wave of fame, including offers to work as

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00:20:20,920 --> 00:20:24,159
Speaker 1: a coach. In the early nineteen fifties, Thorpe noticed a

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Speaker 1: sore on his lip that turned out to be cancer,

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Speaker 1: and as he was undergoing treatment, Passy made a tearful

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Speaker 1: televised plea for help, saying that they were penniless. They

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00:20:34,800 --> 00:20:39,159
Speaker 1: definitely were not wealthy. They were not penniless, though, but

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Speaker 1: this allegation led people to do things like send outrage

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Speaker 1: letters to Warner Brothers under the idea that Thorpe had

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00:20:46,200 --> 00:20:49,119
Speaker 1: not been compensated for his life story, even though he

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00:20:49,160 --> 00:20:51,440
Speaker 1: had sold the rights to this story like way earlier

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Speaker 1: on this film, Jim Thorpe All American came out in

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Speaker 1: nineteen fifty one, and it started Burt Lancaster as Jim Thorpe.

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Speaker 1: Thorpe also worked as an adviser on the film, including

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Speaker 1: teaching Lancaster how to kick a football. The movie premiered

365
00:21:06,280 --> 00:21:11,719
Speaker 1: in Carlisle in Oklahoma City on August Also in nineteen

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Speaker 1: fifty one, the Associated Press called on sports reporters to

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Speaker 1: compile lists of the best athletes of the first half

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Speaker 1: of the twentieth century. It's like the same thing that

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Speaker 1: happens at the end of every year and decade now.

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Speaker 1: Jesse Owens was named the best track and field athlete,

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Speaker 1: with Jim Thorpe coming in second. And then the greatest

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00:21:32,280 --> 00:21:37,040
Speaker 1: athlete overall was Jim Thorpe, with two hundred and fifty

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Speaker 1: two of three hundred nine voters placing him in that

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Speaker 1: top spot. Coming in second was Babe Ruth. Jim Thorpe

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Speaker 1: spent the last couple of years of his life trying

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Speaker 1: to start various projects, but none of them really took off.

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Speaker 1: He died on March nifty three at the age of

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Speaker 1: about sixty four, shortly after he had had a third

379
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Speaker 1: heart attack. In the words of his New York Times

380
00:22:00,359 --> 00:22:04,000
Speaker 1: obituary quote, his memory should be kept for what it deserves,

381
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Speaker 1: that of the greatest all around athlete of our time.

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Speaker 1: There's more to Jim Thorpe's story, though, uh in part

383
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Speaker 1: because the Olympic medals that we have talked about a

384
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Speaker 1: few times, but then also because of a dispute over

385
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Speaker 1: his body, and we're going to talk about that after

386
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Speaker 1: a sponsor break. After Jim Thorpe died in his body

387
00:22:31,160 --> 00:22:33,719
Speaker 1: lay in state in California and it was viewed by

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Speaker 1: hundreds of mourners. Family received condolence letters from public figures,

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Speaker 1: including President Dwight Eisenhower. His body was then taken to Oklahoma,

390
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Speaker 1: and the plan was for both a Catholic funeral and

391
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Speaker 1: a Sacking Fox ceremony followed by a Sacking Fox burial.

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Speaker 1: The Oklahoma legislature had passed a bill a lotting funds

393
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Speaker 1: for a monument that would serve as his final resting place.

394
00:22:59,160 --> 00:23:02,160
Speaker 1: Thorpe had not left a will, but his sons reported

395
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Speaker 1: that he told them and others that he wanted to

396
00:23:05,000 --> 00:23:09,800
Speaker 1: be buried on sac and Fox Land. However, without really

397
00:23:09,840 --> 00:23:14,560
Speaker 1: explaining why, Governor Johnston Murray vetoed the legislation that set

398
00:23:14,560 --> 00:23:18,639
Speaker 1: aside funding for a memorial to Jim Thorpe. On April twelfth,

399
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Speaker 1: ninety three, the thunder Clan of the Second Fox Nation

400
00:23:22,119 --> 00:23:26,520
Speaker 1: started a two day funeral ceremony. Patsy Thorpe arrived at

401
00:23:26,520 --> 00:23:30,480
Speaker 1: the ceremony with police interrupting the proceedings and saying that

402
00:23:30,560 --> 00:23:34,080
Speaker 1: it was too cold. She had Jim's body loaded into

403
00:23:34,160 --> 00:23:38,200
Speaker 1: a hearse and take into a mortuary. A Catholic funeral

404
00:23:38,240 --> 00:23:41,600
Speaker 1: mass followed at St. Benedict's Roman Catholic Church in Shawnee.

405
00:23:42,160 --> 00:23:45,800
Speaker 1: Patty Thorpe didn't consult with Jim's children or other family

406
00:23:45,800 --> 00:23:48,879
Speaker 1: members or the sac and Fox Nation about what happened. Next,

407
00:23:49,560 --> 00:23:52,119
Speaker 1: she started looking for a place that was willing to

408
00:23:52,200 --> 00:23:56,679
Speaker 1: provide a final resting spot for Jim's remains, one that

409
00:23:56,880 --> 00:24:00,399
Speaker 1: she thought would be befitting of his life and his legacy,

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00:24:00,480 --> 00:24:02,760
Speaker 1: and that turned out to be the towns of mock

411
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Speaker 1: Chunk and East mock Chunk, Pennsylvania. The towns were struggling

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Speaker 1: after the collapse of the mining industry in the area,

413
00:24:09,800 --> 00:24:12,920
Speaker 1: and town leaders hoped that this decision would make them

414
00:24:12,920 --> 00:24:18,440
Speaker 1: a tourist attraction. The town's merged renamed themselves Jim Thorpe

415
00:24:18,520 --> 00:24:21,000
Speaker 1: and started planning for the construction of a tomb that

416
00:24:21,040 --> 00:24:25,160
Speaker 1: would house Thorpe's body. As this was happening, in nineteen

417
00:24:25,200 --> 00:24:28,320
Speaker 1: fifty five, the NFL named its m v P Award

418
00:24:28,400 --> 00:24:32,359
Speaker 1: the Jim Thorpe Trophy. Jim Thorpe's body was entombed in

419
00:24:32,440 --> 00:24:37,080
Speaker 1: Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania. In nineteen fifty seven, soil from four

420
00:24:37,200 --> 00:24:41,080
Speaker 1: locations was placed at the tomb. This included Thorpe's family

421
00:24:41,080 --> 00:24:45,960
Speaker 1: farm in Oklahoma, the Carlisle Athletic Field, New York's Polo Grounds,

422
00:24:46,080 --> 00:24:50,240
Speaker 1: and the Olympic Stadium in Stockholm, Sweden. The memorial was

423
00:24:50,280 --> 00:24:53,240
Speaker 1: inscribed with King Gustav the fifth of Sweden's statement that

424
00:24:53,320 --> 00:24:56,399
Speaker 1: Thorpe was the greatest athlete in the world, and also

425
00:24:56,520 --> 00:25:01,639
Speaker 1: adorned with medallions that depicted Thorpe's athletic feet. Thorpe's children

426
00:25:01,720 --> 00:25:05,840
Speaker 1: did not attend this ceremony. This memorial did not, however,

427
00:25:05,880 --> 00:25:09,280
Speaker 1: become a tourist attraction as the town had hoped. When

428
00:25:09,320 --> 00:25:12,720
Speaker 1: Thorpe biographer Bob Wheeler visited as a child years later,

429
00:25:13,280 --> 00:25:15,040
Speaker 1: no one in the town could even tell him about

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00:25:15,119 --> 00:25:18,199
Speaker 1: Jim Thorpe, and he found the tomb neglected and hidden

431
00:25:18,320 --> 00:25:22,200
Speaker 1: among overgrown weeds. Yeah, I watched to talk that he

432
00:25:22,240 --> 00:25:25,240
Speaker 1: gave at the Museum of the American Indian and he

433
00:25:25,320 --> 00:25:27,920
Speaker 1: talked about like he he was just such a fan

434
00:25:28,720 --> 00:25:31,200
Speaker 1: of sports in general. And he was on this trip

435
00:25:31,200 --> 00:25:33,680
Speaker 1: with his parents, and by total coincidence, they had driven

436
00:25:33,720 --> 00:25:35,960
Speaker 1: past Jim Thorpe, and he was like, let's stop, and

437
00:25:36,680 --> 00:25:38,720
Speaker 1: he sort of saw this spot. He was like, I

438
00:25:38,760 --> 00:25:41,240
Speaker 1: feel like there's something there. We should look at whatever

439
00:25:41,280 --> 00:25:42,919
Speaker 1: this is. And it turned out that that was like

440
00:25:43,000 --> 00:25:46,879
Speaker 1: Jim Thorpe's. It was Jim Thorpe's barial place, totally overgrown

441
00:25:47,359 --> 00:25:49,800
Speaker 1: and would not have known it without stopping there to

442
00:25:49,840 --> 00:25:53,439
Speaker 1: go look for it. To fast forward a bit in

443
00:25:55,000 --> 00:25:59,160
Speaker 1: the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGRA,

444
00:25:59,680 --> 00:26:03,359
Speaker 1: was en into law by President George H. W. Bush.

445
00:26:03,560 --> 00:26:05,960
Speaker 1: This law was passed quote as a way to correct

446
00:26:06,080 --> 00:26:10,840
Speaker 1: past abuses to and guarantee protection for the human remains

447
00:26:10,880 --> 00:26:15,439
Speaker 1: and cultural objects of Native American tribal culture. Among the

448
00:26:15,440 --> 00:26:19,199
Speaker 1: provisions of this law is the right to repatriation of

449
00:26:19,280 --> 00:26:24,240
Speaker 1: indigenous cultural items, including human remains that are quote controlled

450
00:26:24,320 --> 00:26:28,840
Speaker 1: by museums or federal agencies. The law basically paved the

451
00:26:28,840 --> 00:26:32,640
Speaker 1: way for Indigenous people in nations to have the remains

452
00:26:32,720 --> 00:26:35,639
Speaker 1: of their ancestors returned to them from museums where they

453
00:26:35,640 --> 00:26:39,399
Speaker 1: are held. Jim Thorpe's youngest son, John again known as Jack,

454
00:26:39,840 --> 00:26:42,760
Speaker 1: filed suit to have his father's remains repatriated to the

455
00:26:42,800 --> 00:26:48,520
Speaker 1: Sac and Fox Nation under Nagpra on June. He thought

456
00:26:48,560 --> 00:26:51,919
Speaker 1: that because his father's funeral ceremony had been interrupted, and

457
00:26:52,000 --> 00:26:54,840
Speaker 1: because he had not been buried on Sac and Fox Land,

458
00:26:55,119 --> 00:26:58,840
Speaker 1: that his soul was not at rest. As we mentioned earlier,

459
00:26:58,920 --> 00:27:02,240
Speaker 1: Jack Thorpe died in eleven and after his passing, his

460
00:27:02,320 --> 00:27:05,600
Speaker 1: surviving brothers, Bill and Richard were added to the suit,

461
00:27:05,760 --> 00:27:10,320
Speaker 1: along with the Sac and Fox Nation. In United States

462
00:27:10,400 --> 00:27:14,040
Speaker 1: District Court Judge Richard Caputo found in favor of Thorpe's sons.

463
00:27:14,720 --> 00:27:18,240
Speaker 1: He ruled that NAGRA applied to the town of jim Thorpe.

464
00:27:18,480 --> 00:27:21,359
Speaker 1: It could be defined as a museum receiving federal funds

465
00:27:21,400 --> 00:27:24,840
Speaker 1: because the town had gotten money under the American Recovery

466
00:27:24,880 --> 00:27:28,240
Speaker 1: and Reinvestment Act of two thousand nine. But by that

467
00:27:28,320 --> 00:27:31,080
Speaker 1: point the town of jim Thorpe had become more of

468
00:27:31,119 --> 00:27:35,040
Speaker 1: a tourist attraction, although not specifically because of the Jim

469
00:27:35,080 --> 00:27:39,399
Speaker 1: Thorpe Memorial. The town had started hosting birthday celebrations and

470
00:27:39,520 --> 00:27:42,560
Speaker 1: other Thorpe memorials, and even though the memorial where he

471
00:27:42,640 --> 00:27:46,359
Speaker 1: was laid to rest wasn't its key tourist attraction, jim

472
00:27:46,400 --> 00:27:49,680
Speaker 1: Thorpe had become a core part of the town's identity.

473
00:27:50,160 --> 00:27:53,560
Speaker 1: Many residents, and at this point some of Thorpe's daughters

474
00:27:53,600 --> 00:27:58,120
Speaker 1: and grandchildren objected to the repatriation and filed an appeal.

475
00:27:58,880 --> 00:28:01,800
Speaker 1: As I understand it, by this point in the story,

476
00:28:01,920 --> 00:28:04,640
Speaker 1: the memorial was a lot better maintained than it had

477
00:28:04,680 --> 00:28:08,840
Speaker 1: been when his biographer found it as a child. On October,

478
00:28:10,800 --> 00:28:13,800
Speaker 1: a three judge panel of the US Third Circuit Court

479
00:28:13,840 --> 00:28:18,760
Speaker 1: of Appeals reversed the lower courts ruling under the absurdity doctrine.

480
00:28:19,920 --> 00:28:23,119
Speaker 1: The basic idea was that a literal reading of the

481
00:28:23,240 --> 00:28:27,480
Speaker 1: plain text of Nagar's provisions here would be in this

482
00:28:27,600 --> 00:28:32,720
Speaker 1: context absurd. The ruling had two key parts. One was

483
00:28:32,760 --> 00:28:36,000
Speaker 1: that Nagpra could not have been intended to overrule the

484
00:28:36,040 --> 00:28:40,680
Speaker 1: intent of the decedent's legal next of kin and passy Thorpe,

485
00:28:40,760 --> 00:28:43,320
Speaker 1: as the next of kin of Jim Thorpe had legally

486
00:28:43,400 --> 00:28:46,480
Speaker 1: made the decision for where he would be buried. The

487
00:28:46,600 --> 00:28:49,440
Speaker 1: other was that upholding the lower courts ruling would allow

488
00:28:49,560 --> 00:28:52,800
Speaker 1: Nagpra to become a tool to settle family disputes among

489
00:28:52,840 --> 00:28:56,600
Speaker 1: indigenous people, and in this case, the question of whether

490
00:28:56,680 --> 00:29:00,400
Speaker 1: to repatriate Thorpe's remains was at its heart of family

491
00:29:00,440 --> 00:29:06,600
Speaker 1: dispute and one that was complicated by centuries of indigenous history. Yeah. Again,

492
00:29:06,760 --> 00:29:10,640
Speaker 1: as I understand it, when the court dispute started, Jim

493
00:29:10,680 --> 00:29:14,040
Speaker 1: Thorpe's children were pretty unified in there. They're feeling that

494
00:29:14,160 --> 00:29:16,840
Speaker 1: his remains should be returned back to the Second Fox Nation.

495
00:29:16,880 --> 00:29:20,600
Speaker 1: But over time not all of them agreed anymore. And

496
00:29:20,920 --> 00:29:23,440
Speaker 1: this is where to me, this just becomes so heartbreaking

497
00:29:23,480 --> 00:29:26,640
Speaker 1: because you see these things play out in families where

498
00:29:26,680 --> 00:29:30,160
Speaker 1: people start to disagree about something that important, and like,

499
00:29:30,240 --> 00:29:33,720
Speaker 1: that is where we were at this point. On October five,

500
00:29:34,920 --> 00:29:37,440
Speaker 1: the U. S. Supreme Court elected not to hear this case.

501
00:29:38,040 --> 00:29:40,160
Speaker 1: While the sound of Jim Thorpe and some of Thorpe's

502
00:29:40,160 --> 00:29:43,680
Speaker 1: descendants were satisfied with that outcome, it was heartbreaking for

503
00:29:43,720 --> 00:29:46,520
Speaker 1: his surviving sons, Richard and Bill, both of whom were

504
00:29:46,560 --> 00:29:48,840
Speaker 1: in their eighties and had hoped to see their father

505
00:29:48,960 --> 00:29:53,080
Speaker 1: buried in Second Fox Land before their own deaths. Also

506
00:29:53,160 --> 00:29:56,760
Speaker 1: heartbreaking for the Second Fox Nation as a whole. Bill

507
00:29:56,800 --> 00:30:00,320
Speaker 1: Thorpe died at the age of ninety nineteen and Richard

508
00:30:00,320 --> 00:30:02,600
Speaker 1: Thorpe died in January of this year at the age

509
00:30:02,600 --> 00:30:05,760
Speaker 1: of seven. The ruling from the Third Court of appeals

510
00:30:05,800 --> 00:30:09,720
Speaker 1: has been controversial, though nag press still applies when a

511
00:30:09,800 --> 00:30:13,880
Speaker 1: museum's acquisition of a person's remains was done legally, so

512
00:30:13,920 --> 00:30:17,040
Speaker 1: the legality of Patsy Thorpe's decision does not really apply.

513
00:30:18,120 --> 00:30:23,280
Speaker 1: NAGPRA also includes specific language about mediating disputed claims. It

514
00:30:23,400 --> 00:30:26,560
Speaker 1: has to since remains, burial objects, and other items being

515
00:30:26,600 --> 00:30:30,080
Speaker 1: repatriated are often very old and can be connected to

516
00:30:30,160 --> 00:30:34,320
Speaker 1: multiple families, tribes, or nations, and the years between Jim

517
00:30:34,360 --> 00:30:37,600
Speaker 1: Thorpe's death and the court cases related to his burial place,

518
00:30:38,040 --> 00:30:40,920
Speaker 1: there was a whole other effort going on that was

519
00:30:40,960 --> 00:30:43,880
Speaker 1: related to his legacy, and that was an attempt to

520
00:30:43,920 --> 00:30:47,880
Speaker 1: have his amateur status reinstated from the nine twelve Olympic

521
00:30:47,920 --> 00:30:51,760
Speaker 1: Games and his medals returned to his family. In nineteen

522
00:30:51,800 --> 00:30:55,960
Speaker 1: seventy three, after ongoing advocacy, the Amateur Athletics Union restored

523
00:30:56,120 --> 00:30:59,360
Speaker 1: Thorpe's status as an amateur athlete for the time covering

524
00:30:59,360 --> 00:31:02,520
Speaker 1: those games, but the IOC did not take any further

525
00:31:02,640 --> 00:31:07,760
Speaker 1: action about his medals or his record. Thorpe biographer Robert

526
00:31:07,760 --> 00:31:11,120
Speaker 1: Wheeler and his wife Dr Florence Ridland, who founded the

527
00:31:11,160 --> 00:31:14,480
Speaker 1: Jim Thorpe Foundation in two were a big part of

528
00:31:14,480 --> 00:31:17,960
Speaker 1: this effort. Ridland managed to find a copy of the

529
00:31:18,000 --> 00:31:21,440
Speaker 1: official by laws of the nineteen twelve Olympic Games sandwiched

530
00:31:21,480 --> 00:31:24,840
Speaker 1: between two shelves at the Library of Congress, and one

531
00:31:24,840 --> 00:31:27,200
Speaker 1: of its provisions was that any review of the game's

532
00:31:27,240 --> 00:31:30,600
Speaker 1: outcome had to take place within thirty days of the games.

533
00:31:31,480 --> 00:31:35,040
Speaker 1: The article that widely publicized Thorpe's time in semi professional

534
00:31:35,040 --> 00:31:38,240
Speaker 1: baseball came out more than six months after the games

535
00:31:38,240 --> 00:31:41,760
Speaker 1: were over. Yes, so, regardless of the question about whether

536
00:31:41,800 --> 00:31:45,800
Speaker 1: semi professional baseball professionalized an athlete in a different sport

537
00:31:45,920 --> 00:31:49,240
Speaker 1: three years later, the IOC had not followed its own

538
00:31:49,320 --> 00:31:52,680
Speaker 1: rules in terms of this, basically the statute of limitations

539
00:31:52,720 --> 00:31:55,120
Speaker 1: on how much time could pass before something like this

540
00:31:55,200 --> 00:31:59,000
Speaker 1: could happen. So, based on this new information, on January

541
00:31:59,600 --> 00:32:04,040
Speaker 1: nineteen three, the IOC presented Thorpe's descendants with replicas of

542
00:32:04,080 --> 00:32:08,640
Speaker 1: his medals. It did not, however, alter the adjusted placements

543
00:32:08,680 --> 00:32:14,200
Speaker 1: of the other finishers to reflect that Thorpe really had one. Instead,

544
00:32:14,320 --> 00:32:18,040
Speaker 1: Jim Thorpe and Ferdinand By are both listed as gold

545
00:32:18,120 --> 00:32:22,280
Speaker 1: medalists in the men's pentathlon, with Thorpe's score of seven

546
00:32:22,600 --> 00:32:26,640
Speaker 1: and Buys score of twenty one. Jim Thorpe and Hugo

547
00:32:26,760 --> 00:32:29,840
Speaker 1: Vicelander are both listed as winners of the decathlon, with

548
00:32:29,880 --> 00:32:33,320
Speaker 1: Thorpe's score of eight thousand, four hundred twelve point nine

549
00:32:33,400 --> 00:32:37,320
Speaker 1: five five and Vicelander's score of seven thousand, seven hundred

550
00:32:37,360 --> 00:32:41,560
Speaker 1: twenty four point four nine five, so they are all

551
00:32:41,720 --> 00:32:47,440
Speaker 1: listed as sort of co gold medalists. The organization Bright

552
00:32:47,480 --> 00:32:51,080
Speaker 1: path Strong started a petition to fully restore Jim Thorpe's

553
00:32:51,120 --> 00:32:56,160
Speaker 1: Olympic record in July of Multiple indigenous tribes and organizations

554
00:32:56,160 --> 00:32:59,800
Speaker 1: are involved, along with Picture Works Entertainment, which is working

555
00:32:59,840 --> 00:33:03,760
Speaker 1: on a forthcoming biopic. Yeah that is all at bright

556
00:33:03,880 --> 00:33:08,280
Speaker 1: paths strong dot com if you would like more information

557
00:33:08,720 --> 00:33:15,320
Speaker 1: about it. Um that is Jim Thorpe. What you got

558
00:33:15,320 --> 00:33:17,920
Speaker 1: in the way a listener mail this time around? I

559
00:33:18,000 --> 00:33:21,840
Speaker 1: have listener mail from Rose and Rose wrote in after

560
00:33:21,880 --> 00:33:27,400
Speaker 1: our recent episode on Cecilia Panga Poshkin and Rose says, Hello, First,

561
00:33:27,440 --> 00:33:29,520
Speaker 1: I love your podcast and I've been listening since sometime

562
00:33:29,520 --> 00:33:32,400
Speaker 1: in While staying up to the down new episodes, I've

563
00:33:32,400 --> 00:33:35,520
Speaker 1: also been going methodically backward through the archive and am

564
00:33:35,560 --> 00:33:38,680
Speaker 1: currently in December two thousand nine. I'm just gonna say soon,

565
00:33:38,760 --> 00:33:41,560
Speaker 1: the episodes are going to get a latch shorter if

566
00:33:41,560 --> 00:33:45,520
Speaker 1: you're going backwards in that way. The ones from oh eight,

567
00:33:45,560 --> 00:33:48,640
Speaker 1: some of them are like four minutes. I caught your

568
00:33:48,680 --> 00:33:52,560
Speaker 1: exasperation about the off handed suggestion that Cecilia Panga Poshkin

569
00:33:52,920 --> 00:33:55,960
Speaker 1: could take over managing the glass plates collection if she

570
00:33:56,000 --> 00:33:58,960
Speaker 1: went to work at the Harvard Observatory. That was made

571
00:33:59,000 --> 00:34:01,840
Speaker 1: because she was female and interested after googling to make sure.

572
00:34:01,880 --> 00:34:03,720
Speaker 1: I'd like to point out that the collection is still

573
00:34:03,720 --> 00:34:06,640
Speaker 1: managed by women, and I am not sure if a

574
00:34:06,680 --> 00:34:08,879
Speaker 1: man has ever been in charge of it. The fact

575
00:34:09,000 --> 00:34:11,600
Speaker 1: seems now to be a point of pride for the collection.

576
00:34:11,719 --> 00:34:15,480
Speaker 1: If you poke around that site, Rose included a link

577
00:34:15,680 --> 00:34:19,080
Speaker 1: to the plate stacks at Harvard. If you poke around

578
00:34:19,080 --> 00:34:21,279
Speaker 1: that site a bit, you'll see that there is an

579
00:34:21,280 --> 00:34:23,440
Speaker 1: effort to digitize the place that has been going on

580
00:34:23,440 --> 00:34:25,560
Speaker 1: since two thousand three or so, which men have been

581
00:34:25,600 --> 00:34:28,160
Speaker 1: involved in. But the curator of the collection is currently

582
00:34:28,200 --> 00:34:31,400
Speaker 1: still a woman. I agree with your exasperation from the story,

583
00:34:31,480 --> 00:34:34,400
Speaker 1: but generally speaking, the management of this collection staying in

584
00:34:34,440 --> 00:34:36,920
Speaker 1: the hands of women as the fields of archives and

585
00:34:37,080 --> 00:34:41,600
Speaker 1: library science professionalized, is actually kind of impressive. Often women

586
00:34:41,680 --> 00:34:45,440
Speaker 1: get pushed out of prestigious positions as fields professionalized, and

587
00:34:45,480 --> 00:34:47,480
Speaker 1: I am not quite sure how that managed to be

588
00:34:47,760 --> 00:34:51,400
Speaker 1: avoided in this case, especially with the added factor of

589
00:34:51,440 --> 00:34:56,040
Speaker 1: the collection being scientific in nature. Uh. We've talked before

590
00:34:56,080 --> 00:34:58,759
Speaker 1: about how when we came on as hosts, we got

591
00:34:58,800 --> 00:35:02,440
Speaker 1: a lot of criticism about what our voices sounded like

592
00:35:02,480 --> 00:35:04,880
Speaker 1: in the fact that we were ruining the podcast, And

593
00:35:04,960 --> 00:35:08,960
Speaker 1: so Rose sort of talks about the experience of going

594
00:35:09,040 --> 00:35:14,960
Speaker 1: backward in the archive in in the way of continuing

595
00:35:14,960 --> 00:35:16,719
Speaker 1: to keep up with new episodes, but then also going

596
00:35:16,840 --> 00:35:18,960
Speaker 1: back through them in sort of a first order, and

597
00:35:19,000 --> 00:35:22,760
Speaker 1: the sort of jarring experience of suddenly having different hosts

598
00:35:22,760 --> 00:35:25,680
Speaker 1: who don't sound the same. UM. I'm not going to

599
00:35:25,760 --> 00:35:28,960
Speaker 1: read that whole bit, but thank you so much Rose

600
00:35:29,400 --> 00:35:34,280
Speaker 1: for sending this on. UM. This is a really great

601
00:35:34,360 --> 00:35:39,719
Speaker 1: point about how, UM, like a lot of fields that

602
00:35:39,800 --> 00:35:43,759
Speaker 1: were considered to be women's work, women got pushed out

603
00:35:43,800 --> 00:35:46,719
Speaker 1: of as it became more a thought of as a

604
00:35:46,719 --> 00:35:50,680
Speaker 1: professional field and not like a more clerical one. So

605
00:35:50,719 --> 00:35:55,120
Speaker 1: we saw the same kind of things with like computer coding,

606
00:35:55,760 --> 00:35:59,160
Speaker 1: like women were a lot of the first coders, and

607
00:35:59,160 --> 00:36:01,239
Speaker 1: then that gradually came a field that was seen as

608
00:36:01,239 --> 00:36:03,719
Speaker 1: one that was for men. UM. So that is a

609
00:36:03,760 --> 00:36:08,279
Speaker 1: totally fair point about the fact that the collection of

610
00:36:08,320 --> 00:36:11,520
Speaker 1: Harvard is still being created by women, even as the

611
00:36:11,600 --> 00:36:16,960
Speaker 1: field of museum curation UM and and collections curation became

612
00:36:17,000 --> 00:36:20,640
Speaker 1: more and more professionalized. UM. In terms of back when

613
00:36:20,680 --> 00:36:24,560
Speaker 1: Cecilia paying Kapashkin came on to Harvard as part of

614
00:36:24,600 --> 00:36:28,440
Speaker 1: that collection, it was not regarded as like a professional

615
00:36:28,920 --> 00:36:32,800
Speaker 1: field that required any kind of professional ability or training

616
00:36:32,800 --> 00:36:37,239
Speaker 1: at all. UM. The very first person to start cataloging

617
00:36:37,320 --> 00:36:40,759
Speaker 1: all of those glass plates at Harvard had really been

618
00:36:41,239 --> 00:36:46,000
Speaker 1: uh Pickerings housekeeper, who he basically hired because he was like,

619
00:36:46,040 --> 00:36:50,640
Speaker 1: you seem generally competent, you could probably do this, And

620
00:36:50,680 --> 00:36:52,480
Speaker 1: then it just sort of just became how it was

621
00:36:52,520 --> 00:36:55,600
Speaker 1: like that some competent woman could probably do this was

622
00:36:55,680 --> 00:36:59,760
Speaker 1: sort of the attitude. UM. We've also talked in previous

623
00:37:00,000 --> 00:37:03,080
Speaker 1: sisodes before about how Pickering recruited all of these women

624
00:37:03,080 --> 00:37:07,320
Speaker 1: to work with him, and they got derisive nicknames about

625
00:37:07,320 --> 00:37:11,360
Speaker 1: being his harem for example. So thank you so much, Rose,

626
00:37:12,000 --> 00:37:16,279
Speaker 1: We're for sending UM this email. That is a great point.

627
00:37:16,320 --> 00:37:19,440
Speaker 1: I also enjoyed reading the story about the sort of

628
00:37:19,520 --> 00:37:23,200
Speaker 1: jarring experience of of suddenly getting to the prior episode

629
00:37:23,239 --> 00:37:25,440
Speaker 1: hosts part of the podcast, even though I did not

630
00:37:25,480 --> 00:37:30,000
Speaker 1: read that whole thing on this episode. I hope everyone

631
00:37:30,040 --> 00:37:34,520
Speaker 1: has enjoyed hearing about Jim Thorpe. Uh enjoyed is maybe

632
00:37:34,520 --> 00:37:36,480
Speaker 1: not always the best work, because some parts of that

633
00:37:36,600 --> 00:37:40,839
Speaker 1: history are really difficult. Um, but yeah, I think Jim

634
00:37:40,840 --> 00:37:43,000
Speaker 1: Thorpe is amazing. If you would like to write to

635
00:37:43,080 --> 00:37:44,920
Speaker 1: us about this or any other podcast, we are a

636
00:37:45,080 --> 00:37:48,120
Speaker 1: history podcast at i heeart radio dot com and then

637
00:37:48,160 --> 00:37:50,279
Speaker 1: we are all over miss in History, which is where

638
00:37:50,280 --> 00:37:54,320
Speaker 1: you'll find our Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and Instagram. You can

639
00:37:54,440 --> 00:37:57,879
Speaker 1: subscribe to our show on the I heart Radio app

640
00:37:57,920 --> 00:38:06,400
Speaker 1: and Apple podcasts and anywhere else you get podcasts. Stuff

641
00:38:06,440 --> 00:38:08,400
Speaker 1: you Missed in History Class is a production of I

642
00:38:08,560 --> 00:38:11,959
Speaker 1: heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit

643
00:38:12,000 --> 00:38:14,880
Speaker 1: the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

644
00:38:15,000 --> 00:38:20,200
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows. H