Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 18, 1993 TAG: 9307180082
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: D1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CARLISLE, PA. LENGTH: Long
"Isn't that the football player Gil Thorp?" the woman wondered.
Only a training-camp rookie could mistake a football legend for a comic-stip character in this south-central Pennsylvania town. The Redskins arrive here today - for the 31st straight year - to open camp. No matter who checks into the dorm at Dickinson College each year, he'll never be as big as Carlisle's football hero.
Jim Thorpe started Carlisle's gridiron identity eight decades ago. As a youth from the Sac-Fox tribe, Thorpe came to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School and left an All-American, an Olympian, a legend. In today's promotion-crazed sports world, Thorpe would be Michael Jordan, Joe Montana, Barry Bonds and Carl Lewis rolled into one.
Every July, Carlisle becomes one of those NFL datelines - like Fredonia, Wilmington, Latrobe, Mankato - produced by summer sweat. The difference is that Carlisle's football identity is more dated. Perhaps that's why few residents seem to notice when Redskins owner Jack Kent Cooke's limo double-parks alongside the entrance to Biddle Field.
Or, maybe it's because there's much more to the hard-working blue-collar town of nearly 20,000 than four weeks of Redskins camp.
That isn't to say the next month won't be special in Carlisle. For instance, at 133 N. Hanover Street - that's downtown - a special store opened this weekend.
It's called "The Redskin Shop." The name is to the point, like Carlisle. It's a souvenir shop, and it's only open for the month the Redskins are in town. Most of its business will come in the next two weeks because the NFL club only opens the Biddle gates for workouts the first two weeks.
By Monday afternoon's second practice, the bleachers on one side of the field - the home of the Division III Dickinson Red Devils - will be packed with Redskins fans. They will engulf players after practice for autographs, then fill restaurants and hotels for the next two weeks.
Oddly, no one in Carlisle seems to have a handle on what the Redskins' annual stay 90 miles north of RFK Stadium means to the town. Ask the chamber-of-commerce types, and the answers echo.
"The town will benefit some, but I don't think anyone has tried to figure it out," said Judy Johnson, executive director of the Carlisle Economic Development Center. "The scrimmage they do [Saturday, against the Pittsburgh Steelers] at the high school is a major funder for the Kiwanis, and what the Kiwanis make there helps fund quite a few programs."
At Dickinson College, where the Redskins work, play, eat and sleep for the next few weeks, the plus is mostly publicity - and that's worth it to the school of 2,000 students who pay $24,000 in tuition, room and board annually.
"We're not getting rich off the Redskins," said Mike Helm, Dickinson's director of purchasing and auxiliary services. "We charge what we consider very fair rates, and I'm sure they feel the same because they keep returning.
"It is a big deal. It's a big part of the mystique in this area. You have a lot of rabid football fans, Redskins fans in particular, and this is their chance to see the players and coaches close up, maybe meet them."
Some of the faces are the same year after year. Some fans have been to more consecutive Redskins camps than Art Monk. And they always go back to the same places.
You usually can see Redskins - particularly after one of Carlisle's typical 90-degree days - replenishing their fluids in the evening at The Gingerbread Man, a bar a few blocks from campus. Some nights, coaches will break from the campus cafeteria line and dine on some of the Italian cuisine at Rillo's.
Yes, the guy in the corner booth really does look like Sonny Jurgensen - because it is Sonny Jurgensen.
"What always amazes me is the people who call early in the fall and want to know the training-camp dates for the next summer so they can schedule their vacations," Helm said. "I'm a football fan, you know, but that's a bit much.
"The Redskins coming here does mean a lot to the college, though. We have a lot of TV stations here, and writers and photographers and their pictures and stories are going back and they're mentioning Carlisle and Dickinson all month. You can't really measure that.
"Higher education today is so competitive, any edge you can get in making your school known is important. The Redskins being here, and having a good relationship with the college, can only be a plus."
\ History thrives here
If the Redskins bring a certain stardom to Carlisle, they aren't the only ones producing crowds in the Cumberland County seat. Try getting through town on an afternoon, for example, when another of the classic auto shows that visits the Carlisle Fairgrounds closes. It was "Chryslers at Carlisle" this weekend. It was trucks last month, Corvettes next month.
Truck traffic can be imposing, too, for an obvious reason. The intersection of I-81 and the Pennsylvania Turnpike (I-76) is only a few miles east of downtown.
One of Bill Clinton's bus tours stopped here last year. That gave the town another Washington connection.
Long before semis, Cooke's limo and TV satellite trucks invaded these parts, Carlisle was founded in 1751. Named for an English town, Carlisle - 18 miles southwest of the state capital in Harrisburg - was a site of repeated Indian uprisings until Benjamin Franklin worked a treaty with the Indians in 1753.
Carlisle was a crucial munitions supply point during the American Revolution, and one of its residents, Mary L. Hays, became the famous Molly Pitcher of the Battle of Monmouth. The town also was the headquarters for George Washington's forces that ended the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794.
During the Civil War, Confederate forces of Gen. Richard Ewell, after occupying buildings at Dickinson College, shelled Carlisle on July 1, 1863, before heading to Gettysburg for one of the decisive battles of the war.
If you ask Carlisle residents for a history lesson, however, usually the first words mentioned are "Jim Thorpe."
\ The favorite son
Thorpe's Sac-Fox name was Wa-Tho-Huck - Bright Path. A great-grandson of the Sac-Fox chief Black Hawk, Thorpe brought fame to the Carlisle Indian School, which was open from 1879-1918. The fields and the gymnasium where Thorpe, who was born in Oklahoma, played are popular tourist spots on the campus of the U.S. Army War College on U.S. 11 on the edge of downtown.
At the Indian school, coach Glenn "Pop" Warner found Thorpe to be a natural athlete. Thorpe was an All-America halfback in 1911 and '12. He won the decathlon and pentathlon in the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm. Later, he had to return his medals because it was learned he had been paid to play minor-league baseball in Rocky Mount, N.C. - although his amateur status was restored, posthumously, in 1982.
He also played six seasons of major-league baseball, coached the Canton Bulldogs in the early days of pro football and was the first president of what is now the NFL. Thorpe, who was a 1963 inductee to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, was voted the greatest athlete of the half-century in 1950.
A monument to Thorpe stands at the courthouse square, at Hanover and High Streets, and his legend is woven into Carlisle's pride. However, it is another Pennsylvania town that has traded on his name.
Jim Thorpe, Pa., in the Pocono Mountains was created by the merger of Mauch Chunk and East Mauch Chunk, two coal towns that were seeking notoriety and prosperity. Although Thorpe had no physical connection to Mauch Chunk, his widow agreed to bury the great athlete there if the towns would build a memorial and name the city for him.
That's what happened.
Thorpe's body and medals may be elsewhere, but his football spirit lives in Carlisle. The Redskins add to that. They probably could use Thorpe.
They don't have anyone else who can drop kick.
by CNB