Jim Thorpe’s Ex-Wife Dies at 101
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Freeda Kirkpatrick Thorpe, the second wife of the athlete Jim Thorpe, died March 2 at a nursing home in Yakima, Wash. She was 101.
Thorpe divorced her famous husband in 1941 after 15 years of marriage, but continued to field calls about their life together into the late 1980s. They had four children together.
Jim Thorpe, a native Oklahoman, won Olympic gold medals in the pentathlon and decathlon in 1912, but the medals were stripped from him after it was determined he had played professional baseball.
The medals were reinstated by the International Olympic Committee in 1982. He also played professional football. He died in 1953.
Freeda Thorpe told the Yakima Herald-Republic in 1996 that she met Thorpe while she was working in Ohio for the manager of a baseball team Thorpe played for. Born in Edicott, Va., she had worked as a secretary. It was the second of three marriages for Jim Thorpe.
