In January 1974 Miriam Anna (Dum) Frey (1891-1988) wrote a letter describing a favorite family story. Written from her home at 629 So. Hanover Street, the letter was addressed to grandson Stephen D. Tiley, then a college student and now an attorney with Frey & Tiley, a firm located near the square in a building in which George Washington had stayed. The structure is across the alley from where the Old Market House had stood, long serving Miriam and her family, until it became the site of the new courthouse.
Miram’s letter relates an event involving Jim Thorpe and Louis Tewanima presenting their 1912 Olympic medals to her friend, Lida Johnson. Lida was one of the young men’s teachers at the Carlisle Industrial Indian School with whom they wanted to share their accomplishments.
Miriam was born little more than a decade after the Carlisle Indian Industrial School was founded in 1879. One of the students at the school, Montreville Speeca Yuda (1889-1949) would actually marry Miriam’s distant cousins. Montreville married Lillian Rankin Flickinger two or three years after Miriam’s chance encounter with his friend Jim Thorpe. Lillian was a granddaughter of Miriam’s paternal great-aunt Esther (Tressler) Sheibley (1795-1859). Esther was a sister of David Tressler, Miriam’s great-grandfather.
Lillian and Montreville’s son George graduated from Carlisle High School in 1941, a few years ahead of Miriam’s daughter Carolyn, who remembered him from her school days. He played trumpet in the band of her classmate June (Burkholder) Lutz, the Ted Lutz group. George’s father graduated from the Carlisle Industrial Indian School in 1913, a year after the events mentioned in the letter below. He played shortstop on the school’s baseball team along with Jim Thorpe, with whom he was to remain good friends.
Miriam’s grandson asked for more information about her memories of Jim Thorpe, resulting in her letter to him as follows: “Dear Stephen, Jim Thorpe was a fabulous athlete. I did not know him personally, although I did meet both Tewanima and him one time.1 I was calling on Lida Johnson, a teacher at the Indian School. We were very good friends. During my call the two boys came to her room to show her some medals they had won. In fact, they were making numerous calls in Teachers’ Quarters that evening to show their medals to their teachers. How unaware I was at the time of how famous those two boys were going to be.2
“One story not in the book [I showed you] is that he was participating in a track meet somewhere (early in his career) when he ran off the track after one time around. ‘Pop’ Warner called to him and said, ‘Jim, the race isn’t over. You must go around again.’ He ran back, went around again, and still won the race.3 “Another story is that there was a contest among a number of schools. A Coach could enter five men for five different contests. Each coach came to the meeting place with five men except ‘Pop’ Warner. He came with one man who won all five contests. Much Love, Grandma”
When Miriam would relate this story in-person we grandchildren could still hear the enthusiastic surprise in her voice when Jim Thorpe knocked on Lida’s door just as they were chatting over a cup of tea.
J. Mark Frey (1880-1958) and his wife, Miriam Anna Dum (G: Thommen) (1891-1988), raised their family on South Hanover Street, Carlisle from the early 1930s forward. Mark, as he was called, was born to a confectioner living in Allentown, about seven miles west of Bethlehem.
1 Jim Thorpe won gold medals in the pentathlon and decathlon; Louis Tewanima won a silver medal in track.
2 Miriam, her sister Blanche L. Dum, and their father George B. Dum participated in the Indian School’s outings programs through the Allison Methodist Church for which Miriam had at one time served as church organist and which was later absorbed by Dickinson College for more general campus use.
3 To the best of her knowledge.