‘Greatest athlete’ Jim Thorpe dies

March 28, 1953: Native American athlete Jim Thorpe, who won two gold medals in the 1912 Olympics and went on to play professional baseball and football, died at 64 in his Lomita trailer. After Thorpe won the decathlon and pentathlon at the Olympics in Stockholm, Swedish King Gustav V said, “Sir, you are the greatest athlete in the world.” But the next year, Thorpe was stripped of his medals after news broke that he had played baseball for money in 1910 -- earning $60 a month in the Eastern Carolina League, but fitting the definition of a professional under Olympic rules.

The day after his death, one of numerous tributes in The Times ran under the headline, “Fabulous Jim Thorpe Won World Acclaim.” “Old Jim, as he referred to himself, was once the world’s greatest athlete,” The Times reported. “At his peak, in 1911 and 1912, he was incomparable. Even now, after four decades have dimmed the memories of his brightest glories, many claim Old Jim was the greatest athlete who ever lived. Old Jim had little left but memories when he died yesterday.”

Thorpe’s medals were restored to his family in 1982, 70 years after he won them.