The Potawatomi Indian Wa-tha-sko-huk, “Bright Path,” was dead. Descended from Chief Blackhawk of the Sauk and Fox. Vaulted over often insurmountable barriers of race and poverty, from the one-room cabin of his birth near Prague, Oklahoma, to the Olympic Stadium of Stockholm, Sweden, where he won gold medals for the United States in both the decathlon and pentathlon. This native son of the Thunder Clan, who clad himself with thunder and ran with lightning on the track, baseball and football fields, was Jim Thorpe. When news of his death swept America in 1953, I was 6 years old. His life story caught my heart, and as a boy I read everything I could about him: about his hero’s journey, his descent, his ultimate triumph. His was the eternal story of unending drive, of focus, of love of the game, of victory, defeat and, at last, victory. That he had been declared by many “the greatest athlete who ever lived” would seem questionable in today’s hyperinflated twenty-four-hour sports cycle, where attention equals fame equals accomplishment. As we near the 100th anniversary of his triumph in the 1912 Olympics, his story is worth telling again and again.