Note the headstone of Carl Phillip Thorpe, a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel who worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs at the Department of the Interior, died of cancer March 18, 1986, at Walter Reed Hospital.
Colonel Thorpe was the son of Jim Thorpe, the American Indian who won two gold medals at the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm and then had them taken away on the grounds that he had once played professional baseball. The Colonel participated in the campaign to have his father's medal returned. In 1982, 29 years after the star athlete's death, the campaign succeeded when the International Olympic Committee voted to restore his honors.
Colonel Thorpe retired from the Army in 1974 with 30 years of service, most of which were spent in intelligence and communications security assignments. He was a veteran of World War II, the Korean conflict and the war in Vietnam. His decorations included a Bronze Star and four Legions of Merit.