Jim Thorpe’s sons ask Supreme Court to allow reburial
Jim Thorpe at the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden. (Public domain image courtesy of The Penn Museum)
Jim Thorpe’s surviving sons are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to allow them to pursue reburial of the famed athlete on American Indian land in Oklahoma.
Thorpe’s body was laid to rest in Pennsylvania more than 60 years ago.
His sons have been fighting to move the remains, saying their father wanted to be buried in the state of his birth.
A federal judge agreed with them, citing federal law on repatriation of American Indian remains. But an appeals court said the body should remain in Jim Thorpe, where it’s kept in a roadside mausoleum.
Thorpe was a football, baseball and track star who won the decathlon and pentathlon in the 1912 Olympics.
Thorpe’s sons and the Sac and Fox Nation filed paperwork Tuesday asking the court to hear the case.
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