Jim Thorpe

:This article refers to the football & baseball player. To see the city in Pennsylvania see Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania.

Later life and death

In 1913, Thorpe married Iva Miller, whom he had met at Carlisle. They had four children: Jim Jr. (who died at age 2), Gale, Charlotte and Grace. Thorpe was a heavy drinker at times, which was probably the main reason the couple divorced in 1924.

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Thorpe remarried in 1926 to Freeda Kirkpatrick, and had four sons with her: Carl, William, Richard, and John. After the end of his athletic career, Thorpe struggled to support his family. He found it difficult to work outside sports, and never could hang on to a job for a very long time. The Great Depression didn't make things easier, and Thorpe went from job to job. Among other jobs, he featured as an extra in several movies, usually playing an Indian chief in Western movies. But he also worked as a construction worker, a bouncer and briefly joined the Merchant Marine in 1945. Four years earlier, his second wife had divorced him, as she was fed up with Thorpe regularly being away from home for weeks.

Related Topics:
Great Depression - Extra - Western movie - Bouncer - Merchant Marine

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By the 1950s, Thorpe had no money left, and when he was hospitalized for lip cancer in 1950, he was admitted as a charity case.

Related Topics:
1950s - Cancer - 1950

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Three years later, Thorpe suffered a heart attack (his third) while eating dinner with his third wife, Patricia Askew, in his trailer home in Lomita, California. Artificial respiration briefly revived Thorpe, but he lost consciousness shortly afterwards, and passed away on March 28, 1953, at age 65.

Related Topics:
Heart attack - Lomita, California - Artificial respiration

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