Two Sculptures of Jim Thorpe
At the Jim Thorpe Memorial, two larger-than-life bronze sculptures capture the extraordinary athletic range of the man for whom the town is named. One depicts Thorpe running with a football tucked beneath his arm; the other shows him in the act of throwing the discus.
Together, they represent two very different sides of his remarkable career.
The football sculpture recalls the years when Thorpe became a sensation at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. Playing under legendary coach Pop Warner, he developed into one of the country’s greatest college football players. He later played professional football and in 1920 became the first president of the American Professional Football Association, the organization that would become the NFL.
The second sculpture, the one in my photograph, captures Thorpe as a track-and-field athlete, preparing to throw the discus. It is particularly appropriate because Thorpe’s greatest international achievement came at the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm. There he won both the pentathlon and the decathlon—competitions deliberately designed to test an athlete across many different disciplines. His events required him to run, jump and throw, and the discus was part of the decathlon in which he triumphed. His Olympic victories helped establish his reputation as one of the greatest all-around athletes of his era.
His abilities went well beyond football and track. Thorpe also played professional baseball, spending six seasons in Major League Baseball, and later played professional basketball. Few athletes have competed at an elite level across such different sports.
More than fifty years after Jim Thorpe was laid to rest here, the community continued to expand the memorial. Both sculptures were created by Mississippi sculptor Edmond Shumpert. The approximately eight-foot-tall football statue was unveiled in May 2007, followed by the discus statue in May 2011. The projects were supported largely through local fundraising, demonstrating the community’s continuing commitment to honoring the athlete whose name the town adopted in 1954.
Together, they tell a much larger story. Jim Thorpe was a runner, jumper, thrower, football player, professional baseball player and an athlete whose abilities crossed boundaries that usually define even the greatest competitors. More than a century after his Olympic triumphs, these two sculptures capture the remarkable versatility that made Jim Thorpe one of the greatest all-around athletes in American history.
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