Grace Francis Thorpe [NoTen O Quah] earned the baccalaureate degree from UT in 1980, not long before her 60th birthday. Her Sac and Fox nation name, NoTen O Quah, means “Woman of the Power of the Wind that Blows Up Before a Storm,” and she lived up to her name both as a Native American activist and in her quest to have the 1912 Olympic records of her father, Jim Thorpe, restored.
In World War II, she served as a corporal in the WACs, stationed for more than two years in New Guinea, the Philippines, and Japan. She was awarded the Bronze Star for her actions at the battle of New Guinea. She served as a staff member for General Douglas MacArthur’s headquarters command in Japan.
She was active in attempts by the American Indian Movement to secure surplus federal land, notably participating in obtaining a former US Army Communications facility for D-Q (Deganawidah-Quetzalcoatl) University in California, and in the 1969 occupation by the American Indian Movement of Alcatraz. In the 1970s she lobbied congress for the National Congress of American Indians, was a legislative assistant to the US Senate Subcommittee on Indian Affairs, and spent two years with the American Indian Policy Review Board, sponsored by the US House of Representatives. During her time in Washington, she earned a paralegal certificate from Antioch College of Law.
Following graduation from UT, she continued her proactive interest in Native American issues. In 1992, when she learned that the Sac and Fox nation was considering allowing the US government to store nuclear waste on its land, she organized opposition to the proposal, and in February 1993 the nation voted against accepting nuclear waste. In 1993 she founded NECONA (National Environmental Coalition of Native Americans) to fight nuclear dumping on Indian lands, and as a result of her efforts, 20 nuclear-free zones were established on reservations and 14 of 17 tribes that had sought nuclear waste zoning withdrew their applications.
As the daughter of Olympian Jim Thorpe, she took the lead in the attempt to have his medals from the 1912 Olympics restored. That battle resulted (1973) in the Amateur Athletic Union’s restoring Thorpe’s amateur status for 1909–12 and the US Olympic Committee’s reinstatement of Thorpe in 1975. In 1982 the USOC restored his status in the 1912 Olympics by declaring him cochampion in the decathlon with Hugo Wieslander of Sweden and in the pentathlon with Ferdinand Bie of Norway and presenting replica medals to the family. (The USOC did not, however, modify the official records to include Thorpe’s results in the 15 events in which he competed.)
Grace Thorpe was an Urban Fellow of MIT and completed course work toward the MBA at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah. She served as a tribal district judge and Health Commissioner of the Sac and Fox Nation in Stroud, Oklahoma.
Her published writings include “The Jim Thorpe Family History,” Chronicles of Oklahoma and “Our Homes are not Dumps: Creating Nuclear Free Zones” in the University of New Mexico School of Law’s Natural Resources Journal.
Her older sister, Gail Margaret Thorpe, also attended UT, working on an MBA, which she completed at Northeastern State University in Oklahoma.