Jim Thorpe

“The great Jim Thorpe was Indian pride
The athlete of the century cast aside
They took his medals right out of his hand
And buried nuclear waste on Indian land”
“Jim Thorpe’s Blues,” Terri Hendrix

Salem Press sent me a review copy of Kate Buford’s “Native American Son: The Life and Sporting Legend of Jim Thorpe.” It looks like a definitive biography. Buford describes Thorpe as “a gentle person, intelligent and funny, with many flaws” – among them, a serious drinking problem. Both a victim of prejudice and at times his own worst enemy, Thorpe was named the greatest all-around athlete of the first half of the twentieth century, easily outpolling Babe Ruth. He deserved the honor. Winner of two gold medals at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics for the pentathlon and decathlon, he was stripped of those titles by self-righteous American officials (even though the statute of limitations had run out and international Olympic officials weren’t demanding such action) because he had received money for playing on a semi-professional baseball team, something that Ivy League college players did all the time. The whole concept of amateur status was a vestige of upper class snobbery; in fact, in ancient Greece Olympic athletes competed for valuable prizes. Thorpe later played major league baseball and football. In 1983, thirty years after his death and following the retirement of President Avery Brundage (an insensitive racist who once said, “Ignorance is no excuse”), the International Olympic Committee reinstated his titles. Buford’s book dispels several myths resulting from racist stereotypes, such as that Thorpe was such a natural athlete he didn’t even train or that he refused a private meeting with the Swedish monarch and said, “Thanks, king,” at the awards ceremony. In addition to the Terry Hendrix song, Bill Reiter and Fat Back Caine also recently produced “Injun’ Jim Blues,” a tribute of sorts but told from the perspective of someone begging for money to buy wine. One line goes, “Man, I used to be the kind of guy that you hoped your son would become.”

Author Kate Buford formerly produced a book about actor Burt Lancaster, most famous for the kissing scene on the beach with Deborah Kerr in “From here to Eternity.” A flaming liberal rumored during the Red Scare to be a commie, he opposed the Vietnam War and supported antiwar candidate Eugene McCarthy in 1968. He won an Academy Award for portraying the evangelist preacher Elmer Gantry and also played a prisoner in “Birdman from Alcatraz.”

It was at the 1912 Olympics that Hawaiian swimmer Duke Kahanamoku won a Gold medal in the 100-meter sprint. Eight years later he repeated the feat at age 30. Four years later he finished second to Johnny Weismuller, who went on to play “Tarzan” in the movies. I saw Kahanamoku, also a surfing legend, shortly before he died in the mid-Sixties while living in Hawaii. A restaurant near Waikiki that bore his name was where Don Ho and the Aliis played at that time. Kahanamoku served as sheriff of Honolulu for 30 years and was treated with much more honor in his later years than Thorpe. Buford writes that in 1941 a New York City establishment, Hubert’s Museum, whose main attraction was a flea circus, paid washed up athletes Jack Johnson, Grover Cleveland Alexander, and Thorpe to greet customers and be available for autographs.

In response to my last blog posting Michelle Stokely thanked me for changing my reference to Comanche Chief Quanah Parker from “half-breed” to “mixed blood.” Jim Thorpe was also of mixed blood, approximately three-eighths Sauk and two-eighths Potawatomi. Michelle thanked me for mentioning the the article about the World War II pilots adrift at sea in “Vanity Fair,” which she included in a care package a female soldier in Afghanistan. Darcy Wade informed me that bloggers on Post-Trib reporter Jerry Davich’s site, called “Observations from the Edge,” were buzzing over his reaction to the question, is the survival of Gary vital to the health of the Region? After claiming that he had long hoped for the best for his hometown, Davich had written: “We had better hope not, because I don’t see Gary rising out of its depths any time soon.” One guy responded, “Great attitude, jerk.” Another called the city of Gary “the White elephant in the room.” Someone identifying himself as “Escape from NWI” wrote, “Gary needs NWI, NWI needs Gary. If you want all of NWI to turn into a classless, suburban strip mall, with no culture, no identity, and not a distinguishable feature, so be it. It is going to take the death of a bigoted, narrow-minded generation of people to turn Gary around.” A couple years ago Davich did a humorous column about communities’ misleading welcome signs. He suggested these realistic alternatives for Miller (“Where Property Taxes Finally Caught Up to Us”), Hobart (“Salvador Dali Did Our Zoning”), and Ogden Dunes (“We Have a Guard House and We’ll Use It If Necessary”). A blogger suggested this for South Haven: “We have Valpo addresses, Portage schools, Wheeler phone numbers, and all the vandalism you could ask for.”

A journal accepted Chris Young’s article on presidential proclamations that I helped edit for him. In the spring he is team-teaching a course on the American presidency with Nicole Anslover. Hope to sit in on it occasionally. I composed the following paragraph in the hopes of getting faculty to have their students keep journals next semester: “I have decided to reprise my “Ides of March 2003” Steel Shavings issue (volume 36) by publishing journals written in March of 2011. In addition to asking previous contributors to once again keep journals, it would make a good class assignment. Students could become published authors and contribute to the documenting of the contemporary social history of the Calumet Region by providing intimate, personal accounts of their daily lives. To gear the assignment to course themes in 2003 I had students in my History class about the 1970s make observations based in part on what they read or saw on TV shows depicting that era. Similarly, Chuck Gallmeier asked students in a Sociology class about the Family to make references to family dynamics. A course on Religion and American Culture would lend itself to ruminations on church experiences. Fine Arts majors could keep a photo journal with captions. In fact, plentiful photos would be a welcome addition to all papers. The Women’s Studies Gender and Sexuality course offers numerous possibilities. I’ll make available copies of volume 36 so that students might get some idea of how others have handled the assignment. Let me know if you think this assignment might work in one or more of your classes. Should students not want their names used, they can provide pseudonyms. I’d be happy to attend your class to explain the project and the historical value of journals. The journals should be typed, in Microsoft Word if possible, to make editing easier.”

Steve McShane, who will have his Indiana History students keep journals, recently put a display about Latinos in Northwest Indiana in the Library/Conference Center lobby. Among other things, it includes a facsimile of the “Maria’s Journey” book cover, an Arredondo family picture, photos of Mexican Americans coerced into getting on a repatriation train during the Hoover years of the depression, a photo of Lake County Sheriff Roy Dominguez with Hillary Clinton, and Seventies flyers from Latino protest groups. Steve mentioned that John Davies thought I’d make a good speaker at Vivian Carter’s Wall of Fame induction, but I suggested they get an African American instead or maybe Tom Higgins, who worked at WWCA when she had her radio program.

Wendy likes the idea of the tiara mystery story, and both she and LeeLee contributed to this paragraph: “Wendy was uncertain when the tiara disappeared. Saturday morning before riding to the airport she attended the reunion breakfast in the lobby of the Hilton Gardens, leaving suitcases near the front door. When her town car arrived, the driver waited patiently as Wendy said her final good-byes. He then took care of her baggage all the way to airport check-in. Back home, her regular limousine driver secured them from baggage claim. It was only when she went through her suitcases the next day did she realize the tiara was missing. She was certain that she had put it in her Louis Vuitton French bag, a gift from a dear friend. She had intended to carry it on the plane, but with a shopping bag full of presents for her grandkids and a purse bursting with reunion souvenirs, the expensive bag was out of her sight for a few hours. The airline representative may have assumed that it contained valuables and, if criminally inclined, could have alerted a partner. But who would take the tiara when much more valuable items were among the belongings, including the bag itself, worth at least a thousand dollars? Or had someone back at the Hilton Gardens already snatched the tiara, a jealous classmate of Wendy’s, perhaps? That was what she wanted Captain Cardinal to find out.”

I enjoyed “Morning Glory” despite finding the plot about a young producer saving a network rival of “Today” and “Good Morning America” to be rather unrealistic. Rachel McAdams, splendidly daffy in “Wedding Crashers” and “Sherlock Holmes,” played a bright workaholic. Harrison Ford was a hoot as the reluctant veteran newsman whom she recruits to be co-anchor with always-worth-watching Diane Keaton, who calls her “Gidget” and raps with 50 Cent and DJ Whoo Kid on “Candy Shop” (“I’ll take you to the candy shop. I’ll let you lick the lollipop”) a true highlight. One verse goes, “I melt in your mouth girl, not in your hands, ha ha.”

Among the flurry of emails regarding condo business was a call for a board meeting. I was able to get the day changed from Wednesday to Tuesday, so I can still bowl. Leo Rondo is hosting it, and I’ll be taking notes as secretary for the first time.