Grace Thorpe

Grace Francis Thorpe (10 December 1921 – 1 April 2008) was an American environmentalist and Native rights activist. She served with the Women's Army Corps and received a Bronze Star Medal for her service as a Corporal in the New Guinea campaign. She attended the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and the Antioch School of Law, and went on to become a tribal district court judge. In 1999, she received a Nuclear-Free Future Award for her opposition to storing toxic and radioactive waste on indigenous land. Her father was well-known American football player and Olympic athlete Jim Thorpe. The Grace F. Thorpe Collection is held by the National Museum of the American Indian Archives Center. Personal life Thorpe was born on December 10, 1921, to parents James (Jim) Francis Thorpe (Sac and Fox) and Iva Margaret Miller. Her tribal heritage included Potawatomi, Kickapoo, Sac and Fox, and Menominee ancestry, and she was a direct descendant of Sac and Fox chief Black Hawk. She was born in Yale, Oklahoma in the only house her father ever owned. Now a museum, it is fondly known as the “Jim Thorpe House” and can be visited by tourists year round. Grace was the youngest of four; her oldest sister Gail Margaret was born in 1917, her brother James in 1918, and her sister Charlotte Marie in 1919. Her brother James died from polio before reaching adolescence. By the time of Grace's birth, her father, Jim Thorpe, was already an Olympic medalist. When Iva and Jim divorced in 1923, Jim moved to California to pursue film, while Iva took Charlotte, Gail, and Grace to Chicago. Grace lived with both parents for several years before finishing high school. Jim married two more times in his lifetime, giving Grace four half-brothers, with whom she had little interaction. Grace remained close with her father, however, and visited him frequently as he moved around the country.