[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 51 (Wednesday, April 14, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Page S3716]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         TRIBUTE TO JIM THORPE

 Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to 
Jim Thorpe as he is being considered in the selection of Athlete of the 
Century. Pennsylvania has a historic affiliation to this great man, of 
whom a borough in Carbon County Pennsylvania is named for.
  Jim Thorpe is the only American athlete to ever excel, as an amateur 
and as a professional, in three major sports; track and field, football 
and baseball.
  As an amateur in track and field, Thorpe won the pentathlon and the 
decathlon at the Amateur Athletic Union's (AAU) National Championship 
Trials in Boston, prior to the 1912 Olympics. He went on to represent 
Sac, Fox Nation and the United States in the 1912 Olympic Games in 
Stockholm, Sweden, and became the first U.S. athlete to win the 
decathlon and the only athlete in the world to win both the decathlon 
and the pentathlon during one Olympic year. These athletic feats and 
the subsequent worldwide publicity helped to establish the viability of 
the Olympics.
  Thorpe's major league baseball career consisted of playing with the 
New York Giants, the Cincinnati Reds and the Boston Braves, in which he 
ended the 1919 season with a .327 average.
  His amateur football record was established while he was a student at 
the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania and was chosen to Walter 
Camp's First Team All American Half-Back in 1911 and 1912. A founding 
father of professional football, Thorpe became the first elected 
president of the American Professional Football Association, now known 
as the National Football League. He was voted America's Greatest All-
Around Male Athlete and chosen as the greatest football player of the 
half-century in 1950 by an Associated Press Poll of sports writers. He 
was also named the Greatest American Football Player in History in a 
1977 national poll conducted by Sport Magazine.
  Because of his outstanding sports achievements, Thorpe was inducted 
into the National Indian Hall of Fame, the Helms Professional Football 
Hall of Fame, the Professional Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, 
the National Track and Field Hall of Fame, and the Pennsylvania and 
Oklahoma Halls of Fame.
  Mr. President, Jim Thorpe's immeasurable sports achievements have 
long been an inspiration to America's youth, as well as to the youth of 
Pennsylvania. I ask my colleagues to join with me in paying tribute to 
Jim Thorpe for his renowned accomplishments, as he is considered for 
Athlete of the Century in 2000.

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