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Jim Thorpe's Daughter:
'He'd Have Made a Great Chief'
by JEANNE TRO WILLIAMS

His Indian name was Wa-Tho-Huck and it means Bright Path. But Grace Thorpe, 1632 E. Northern, knows her father's life was not as sweet and free as it might have been.
"I don't think he cared for white society as such, even though he married white women," Jim Thorpe's daughter said. "With his guts and skill he'd have made a great war chief if he'd been born a hundred years earlier. He liked a good fight."
JAMES FRANCIS Thorpe was chosen greatest male athlete of the first half of this century. When the Sac and Fox boy from Oklahoma went to Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania in the early 1900s, he became a combination Frank Merriwell-Superman. Put a football in his hand or a track under his feet and he could do anything.
Against Army he ran two kickoffs back for touchdowns, won almost single-handedly. At the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm, Czar Nicholas of Russia personally gave him a jeweled medal in admiration of his tremendous feats.
But the Olympic committee took his gold medals and you won't find his track records in the book. They decided he wasn't a simon pure amateur because of three months of semi-pro baseball.
"Bless his heart," said Grace, "I don't think Dad minded too much. I honestly don't think he ever tried very hard in any sport. It was so natural and easy for him. His coach, Pop Warner, used to say, 'What could Jim do if ever went all out?'"
Grace and her two older sisters are children of Thorpe's first marriage. There are four sons by a second marriage. "We're all scattered. Dad's funeral in 1953 was the first time we were all together. I knew the boys, because I'd gone to stay with Dad for a time in California."
Most of the family gathered again this June for the unveiling of Thorpe's portrait in the rotunda of the capitol in Oklahoma City.
"Dad's the fourth Indian to have his portrait on permanent display." The others are Cherokee educator Sequoyah, Will Rogers, and the late Senator from Oklahoma, Robert Kerr.
GRACE WAS born in Yale, Okla., in a house that is now a museum to Thorpe. She was educated at Haskell Institute, an Indian school. Her first visit to Phoenix was during World War II, when she came through here recruiting for the Women's Army Corps.
You wouldn't guess her Indian heritage. She's 5 feet 10, fair-skinned, brisk in manner, sunburns easily, has changeable gray-green-blue eyes. "They're half-breed eyes. Dad was Sac and Fox, Potawatomi, Kickapoo, French and Irish. Mother was Scotch-Irish.'
For the past 12 years, Miss Thorpe, who resumed her maiden name after a divorce, has been an account executive in New York, selling ad space in the Manhattan Yellow Pages. She holds a New York state real estate license, isn't certain what she'll do here.
"I'd like it to be something to do with Indians." In April she coordinated an industrial display in Los Angeles representing 16 tribal chiefs from reservations in Arizona, Montana, and the Dakotas, Minnesota, Alaska, New Mexico. She took it to New York City in May.
"Quite a job and I'm proud of myself. The industrialists, more than 200 attended each session, are already exploring reservation possibilities."
MISS THORPE'S tall, blonde daughter Dagmar, is in college back east. A young son was killed in an auto accident three years ago, "I still can't bear to think or talk about that."
Her memories of her father are vivid. "He was so gentle, that big bear of a man, so kind to women and children. He did have a temper, but it was quiet."
She said her father never talked about himself, his medals, his years of glory as an athlete, not even to his children. "He was so modest. They taught him to be a tailor at Carlisle. I still can see him sitting quietly, sewing on a button or cuffing a pair of pants."

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Republic Photo by Yul Conaway 
Grace Thorpe with portrait of her father