Day: July 16, 2022

Professional amateurs

by dougpete, posted in OTR

Sometimes I go looking for stories and other times stories come looking for me. I warn anyone who follows me on social media that I’ve really noisy between 5 and 6 am. That’s when I’m on my breakfast and first cup of coffee.

Yesterday morning was no different. There was lots of great reading there for me. I share it in case there are others that are interested in the same stuff. If not, they can keep on scrolling.

Later, I just sat down to do a little work. I was using the Edge browser at the time and opened a new tab. I’m sorry, Microsoft, but other than a quick glance, I’m just here to do something else.

Except for this time. An image flew by and I recognized it immediately. The story had scrolled off the slideshow so I had to backtrack and found the story.

Jim Thorpe reinstated as sole winner for 1912 Olympic golds

This was of huge interest to me.

As a pre-teen or maybe a teenager, I had the book “The Jim Thorpe Story” and had read the book from cover to cover many times. It literally was read by flashlight under the covers at times. A lot of times, it was my brother ratting me out to my parents who took back the flashlight.

Even back then, there was a great deal to learn from the story.

We certainly didn’t have a Wikipedia reference like we do today. To the best of my knowledge, the book became collateral damage when I moved out to attend university.

Being an amateur back then was considerably different from being an athlete at the time which has no comparison to being an athlete on scholarship today.

There was also the whole issue of his ethnicity and speculation that resulted in the stripping of his Olympic medals.

I do remember writing papers and doing presentations at school about Mr. Thorpe. The story was so bizarre by my standards back then and just unbelievable in today’s reality.

I’m delighted that the wrong has been righted.

There is a serious message here that I hope is addressed in schools with our youth.

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OTR Links 07/16/2022

by dougpete, posted in Links

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.