Someday Veronica Capobianco or Veronica Brown - whomever a judge eventually decides she is - will encounter the legacy of Oklahoma native son Jim Thorpe: football legend, Olympian and the Zeus of 20th-century American athletes.
When it happens, I wonder if Veronica will realize the striking similarities of circumstance that she, so very alive, and Thorpe, so long dead, shared back in 2013 on a long and difficult road home.
The births, in Oklahoma, of Veronica, part Cherokee, and Thorpe, a Sac and Fox, are separated by 121 years. Yet both have become the focus of legal battles involving multiple jurisdictions, appeals, Indian sovereignty and federal laws designed to protect Native Americans. In Veronica's case, the law is the Indian Child Welfare Act; in the Thorpe case, it is the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which allows Indian tribes to demand that museums return Indian remains and artifacts.
Baby Veronica
The twists and turns in the Baby Veronica continue, and have been well-documented thus far by Tulsa World Michael Overall. The now pre-school-age Veronica celebrated her fourth birthday this month in Oklahoma with her fate still undecided.
The fight pits Matt and Melanie Capobianco, the South Carolina couple who adopted the newborn Veronica after her unmarried, non-Indian mother gave up her parental rights, against Dusten Brown, the girl's biological father and a Cherokee tribe member. Relying on the ICWA, Brown won custody of Veronica in a South Carolina court two years ago and returned with the child to Oklahoma.
The fight continued, however, going all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court where, on June 25, justices ruled that the ICWA, designed to keep Indian families together, did not apply since Veronica was not part of an intact Indian family when she was adopted.
The Supreme Court sent the case back to South Carolina, and in July that state's Supreme Court terminated Brown's parental rights and gave full custody to the Capobiancos.
Since then, the litigation has playing out in at least four state and tribal courts. On Sept. 4, Gov. Mary Fallin accused Brown of acting in bad faith with the Capobiancos and signed an extradition warrant to send Brown to South Carolina. Brown posted bond and is appealing. Veronica remains in Oklahoma.
Bones of contention
Meanwhile, another Indian "custody" battle, over possession of Thorpe's remains, has raged even longer. After his death in 1953, Thorpe's widow, and third wife Patricia, decided her husband would be buried in a small Pennsylvania town - a place with which Thorpe had no connection.
Apparently, the burial decision was based on something akin to competitive bidding. Thorpe's family thought the internationally-recognized athlete would be buried in a family cemetery in Shawnee. However, to their dismay, for several months after his death, his wife instead shopped her husband's body, seeking the best deal for his remains. When two tiny Pennsylvania boroughs - Mauch Chunk and East Mauch Chunk - offered to merge, name the new town "Jim Thorpe," build a memorial and mausoleum to Thorpe, and give Patricia money for "expenses," the deal was done.
Consequently, for the past 59 years, Jim Thorpe, the deceased, has resided in Jim Thorpe, the Pennsylvania town that didn't even exist during his lifetime. Indeed, it's likely that Thorpe never set foot in either of the Mauch Chunks.
Jim Thorpe, the town, wasn't Patricia's first choice for his burial. She also had visited Carlisle, Pa., where Thorpe established his national reputation as an unequalled athlete. In the early 1900s, Thorpe had attended the Carlisle Indian Institute, where he first gained football acclaim, playing for legendary coach Pop Warner. Carlisle and Thorpe won the national collegiate football championship in 1912. Later that same year, Thorpe won two gold medals in the Olympic Games in Stockholm, Sweden. Those medals were stripped a year later, however, after it came to light that Thorpe had played semi-professional baseball for pay. In 1983, 30 years after his death the medals were reinstated.
Carlisle might have been a fitting resting place for Thorpe, but Patricia demanded too much money, town officials later said, so the honor, instead, went to a town that built its identity and economy on his name.
Resting place
In 2001, some of Thorpe's surviving children announced that they would ask Jim Thorpe, Pa., to return their father's remains to Oklahoma for a proper Indian burial. In 2010, that request was accompanied by a summons when a lawsuit was filed in federal court in Scranton, Pa. Last April, Jim Thorpe, the town, lost what may be just the first round of the fight - after a federal judge ruled in favor of the Thorpe family and the Sac and Fox tribe that Thorpe's remains must be returned. U.S. District Judge A. Richard Caputo held that "The borough of Jim Thorpe is a 'museum' under the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act," and that the town/museum would have to return the remains of its most famous resident to his family and tribe. The town is appealing the decision. Because of the broad implications of what may be considered a "museum' under NAGPRA, this case might also wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court.
The tribe and family argued that their father wished to be buried in his native state, on Sac and Fox tribal grounds. Thorpe, who was given the Indian name Wa-tho-huck, meaning "Shining Path, when he was born in 1888, on a farm near Prague, Okla., 19 years before statehood.
Like the Baby Veronica case, the Thorpe case has become a polarizing fight between Native American and non-Indian interests played out against a backdrop of federal law designed to protect Native American interests.
Lesser known is that the lawsuit involving Thorpe's remains might have involved different parties, even Tulsa.
In early 1954, Patricia Thorpe removed her husband's remains from Shawnee after Gov. Johnston Murray, vetoed a $25,000 state appropriation to build a mausoleum in Thorpe's honor in Shawnee.
Patricia took Thorpe's remains to the Rose Hill mausoleum in Tulsa. She said that she intended to start a new life in Tulsa, where a burial monument would be erected on 30-acres of donated land near State Highway 33.
Gone
Not long after the move, however, she received a better offer from Pennsylvania.
"I'm not mad at the people in Oklahoma for not building a memorial for Jim," she told the Tulsa World. "But since the people in Pennsylvania move so much faster I think it is only fitting that Jim should be buried there."
The Feb. 1, 1954, story showed a photo of a smiling Patricia Thorpe, in Tulsa visiting friends, petting her fluffy American Eskimo dog Butch.
She and Thorpe's remains soon were gone. Had things gone differently Tulsa might well have ended up in the midst of a custody battle more than a half century later.
Were the great Jim Thorpe here, it is likely he would say, "Stop this tug-of-war, please let me go home." But dead men don't talk and like Veronica, he has no say. What becomes "home" for each is decided by someone else. Best interests are overshadowed by competing interests.
Little Veronica and the late Jim Thorpe are battled for by others seeking possession of each. One is too young to speak for what she wants in life; the other too long gone to confirm what he wanted in death.
Julie DelCour, 918-581-8379
julie.delcour@tulsaworld.com
Original Print Headline: The 'baby' and the bones on the long road home
Julie Delcour
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