3rd Jim Thorpe sculpture slated for 2020

A life-size bronze statue of Jim Thorpe playing baseball should be unveiled at his mausoleum in spring-summer 2020, following delays due to the sculptor’s health.

Sculptor Edmond Shumpert has resumed work on the statue after health problems left him unable to work for more than six months.

When it’s completed, it will stand behind Shumpert’s two other statues of Jim Thorpe at the mausoleum.

“Our sculptor, who’s 76 years old, developed a serious back ailment and he wasn’t able to work on the bronze. He’s back on track now, his son is helping him. Things are looking good right now,” said Jack Kmetz, president of The Jim Thorpe Area Sports Hall of Fame.

The Jim Thorpe Area Sports Hall of Fame commissioned all three statues, after Thorpe’s late daughter Grace suggested that there should be a statue of her father.

The hall of fame received a $70,000 Keystone Communities grant through state Sen. John Yudichak to help complete the project.

Shumpert, who lives in Mississippi, is recovering after developing a serious back condition last fall. He said a minor problem got worse due to treatment he received.

The condition caused him to fall behind schedule on the third statue, which was scheduled to be completed a few months ago.

Shumpert said he’s nearly finished creating the steel frame of the sculpture, which is physically the hardest part of the project.

“The steel tubing you put up to make it, they’re the most strenuous thing. More of a struggle. I’m almost at the point where you just put the clay on,” he said.

Work should begin this fall on a concrete pad for the statue. The statue will sit on top of a 6-foot-tall granite pedestal which will be installed when work on the statue is completed. The project was previously delayed while courts heard a lawsuit from two of Thorpe’s children seeking to move Thorpe from his resting place here back to Indian tribal lands in Oklahoma.

The project includes other upgrades to the memorial site. There are plans to install posts around the perimeter of the grounds — connected with chains and lit with LED lights — in order to prevent vehicles from driving through the grass. The driveway accessing the mausoleum site were closed for several weeks earlier this year to allow the grass to grow.

Once the statue is installed, the three life-size statues will each be lit up at night.

The hall of fame is also considering a registration booth where visitors can sign in, so they have a record of the places from which the mausoleum draws visitors.

The hall of fame also recently contracted Walters Monument of Summit Hill to regrout the athlete’s mausoleum, something which hadn’t been done since it was built in 1957.

Grace requested that the town build a statue of her father around 2000, after he was voted the athlete of the century in an online poll. She died in 2008. In 2011, a second statue was added.