COMMENTARY : It’s a ‘Bright Path’--Not-So-Bright Route

Anything the U.S. Olympic movement can do to honor Jim Thorpe is a good thing. So it was good what Atlanta wanted to do in 1996. It would honor Thorpe’s memory by running the Olympic torch through his birthplace.

As it happens, though, there’s one problem. They’re taking it through the wrong town. Worse, they know it’s the wrong town. Worse yet, they won’t change the route to make it right.

The Sac and Fox Indian called wa-tho-huck-- “Bright Path”--came to be an American sports legend named James Francis Thorpe. He won the decathlon in the 1912 Olympics at Stockholm with a performance that moved King Gustav V to tell him, “Sir, you are the greatest athlete in the world.”

Thorpe went on to play 15 years of professional football--he was there at the beginnings in Canton--and he played seven years of major league baseball. He was Bo Jackson before Bo Jackson’s daddy was born.

Look him up in an encyclopedia: “THORPE, James (Jim) Francis, American athlete: b. near Prague, Okla., May 28, 1887; d. Los Angeles, Calif., March 28, 1953. Selected in 1950 through an Associated Press poll of 393 experts as the greatest male athlete, as well as the outstanding football player, of the first-half of the 20th century. . . . “

As for the torch run, in 1984 the Olympic marketers learned they could make money by running the Olympic torch across the country on its way to light the flame opening at the Los Angeles Games. Atlanta designed a torch route of 15,000 miles passing within a two-hour drive of 200 million Americans.

The money comes from sponsorships and from the run’s use as a marketing tool that encourages us to buy stuff and watch the television coverage. The promotion began last summer when the Atlanta folks and NBC-TV put on a show announcing the torch run. One of the show’s highlights was a piece about Thorpe.

It was wonderful, good and perfect that the torch would go through the great man’s birthplace, Prague, a railroad town that in the late 19th century absorbed the Native American community of Keokuk Falls, Thorpe’s family’s hometown, now a prairie ghost town.

Imagine the surprise of the proud folks in Prague when they read in the next day’s paper that the torch “will go through Yale--birthplace of Jim Thorpe--before stopping for the night in Stillwater.”

Say what?

Yale!?! Yale is 50 miles from Prague. Yes, Thorpe lived in Yale, and the house he lived in is still there under the care of the Oklahoma Historical Society. But by the time Thorpe lived in Yale, he was 30 and past his shining moments.

The truth is, Thorpe’s third wife and children lived in Yale only from 1917 through ‘23, while he spent most of that time on the road as a baseball and football player. Yale was never much more than a mailing address for Jim Thorpe. Prague was his heart. For years, the Prague High School Red Devils football team held its pep rallies at the Keokuk Falls site of Thorpe’s original cabin. Take that, Yale.

Someone in Atlanta has made a mistake. And Prague is trying to get it straightened out--with no success.

Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating has asked the Atlanta organizing committee to change the torch route to include Prague. So has the chief of the Sac and Fox Nation, Elmer Manatowa, who suggested a 95-mile detour in the 15,000-mile route: “A slight restructuring of the torch route would bring the torch both through Prague and through the Sac and Fox Nation reservation, located seven miles north of Prague.”

But the Atlanta folks say no. They’ve got their route and they’re not changing it. They’ll stick to a route so wrong-headed it not only does not go through Thorpe’s birthplace as advertised, it does not even cross Sac and Fox land.

Suddenly, the whole thing is less an honor than an insult.

Not that Atlanta will acknowledge any such thing.

“Our intentions in going to Oklahoma were not to honor Jim Thorpe,” says David Emanuel, the Atlanta committeeman in charge of the torch run and a fellow who must have been taking a nap when NBC-TV did its Thorpe piece.

The real intent, Emanuel says, was to make the torch run as inclusive as possible of American’s diverse cultures. Because Oklahoma has a higher percentage of Native Americans in its population than any other state, the torch route was designed to go there.

“Whether its Yale or Prague,” Emanuel says, “it recognizes Jim Thorpe’s heritage with the Sac and Fox tribe, as well as being a tribute to the people of Oklahoma.”

Such weasel words have left Sam Muzny of the Prague Historical Society angry for months. He says, “Atlanta’s not wanting this to be the ‘Bubba Olympics.’ But they can’t even get Jim Thorpe’s birthplace right. The only place Jim Thorpe isn’t big is with those crackers in Georgia. So it is the ‘Bubba Olympics.’ Somebody screwed up, and Emanuel just wants us to give up. All he does is blow smoke.”

Grace Thorpe, Thorpe’s daughter, lives in Prague. “I have no hard feelings, but it would have been nice to have the torch go through Prague, where Dad’s daughters and granddaughters and all the tribe could see it. It wouldn’t take much of an effort to change the route, would it?”

Atlanta would need to make an .006% change in a 15,000-mile route, and it has six months to do it.

Either it can’t be done or won’t be done. In any case, the controversy has made one good thing happen for Prague. On Thursday of this week, a 7-foot-tall granite monument was to go up in front of the city museum. The monument will show carvings of Jim Thorpe in football and track gear along with symbols of the Sac and Fox Nation. And in capital letters, this: “BIRTHPLACE OF JIM THORPE.”