Our friendship goes back to Seminary days in the late 1950s. We had several classes together and used to do shoot-arounds in the funky basement of the gym of the seminary on East 49th street in Manhattan. We found that we thought a lot alike on many theological and related issues. I never met Karls’ wife Jean, but he told me a great deal about her. I feel as though I have known Karl all of my life.
Karl grew up in a Salvation Army family. For those of you who do not remember or never knew about the Army, it was – and I’m pretty sure still is – a strong but peculiar Fundamentalist organization that wears army-like uniforms and plays band music on the street corners of big cities. They also collect donations in buckets at Christmas time. I believe they were started by a fellow named Booth. I think Karl left the Army when he finished college at Adelphi College in Queens NY.
Once while we were shooting hoops Karl told me that in his senior year at Adelphi his team got to play in Madison Square Garden and he hit a stupidly taken hook-shot from beyond the keyhole area. While we shot the ball around we also talked theology. We greatly admired our leading professor, Robert A. Traina whose teaching and writing (Methodical Bible Study), avidly discussing the content and implications of our classes together with him.
While in seminary I commuted to the city from The Stony Brook School on Long Island where I was a part-time teacher. I remember introducing Karl to the school and after I left he was hired to teach 8th Grade Bible classes. Before long he and his family moved to the school and Karl eventually became a full-time Bible teacher there. Indeed, a few years later he and his work were so respected that he was chosen to be the Headmaster of the school. During his years there the school prospered a great deal.
One evening many years later I was teaching at Eastern College just outside of Philadelphia and there came a knock on the door. There was Karl all smiles and eager to catch-up on old times. I think he was out doing “fund raising” for the Stony Brook School. We had a wonderful reunion that evening. I remember that he looked around and asked where all my books were. He always teased me about writing so many books. I told him they were in my office at the college. We never saw each other again after that evening around 1980.
However, somehow we connected up again on the internet around the year 2000 and renewed our friendship with a good deal of vigor. We made plans for him to visit my wife Mari and me in Tucson, AZ, but it turned out that his health would not allow it. So we continued to write emails back and forth for several years, mostly with me sending him my latest scribblings and he responding with keen observations and analysis.
Karl was a big person and eventually had trouble avoiding falling often. Nonetheless he amazed me with his accounts of his outings with his children all up and down the East coast. Since his wife had died Karl lived with his two daughters near Washington, D.C. Since Karl had trouble fiddling with a keyboard he preferred talking on the phone, so we occasionally got to hear each other’s voice. All through these last couple of years Karl’s continued interest in discussing ideas challenged and delighted me.
A couple of weeks ago I found that I was unable to connect up with Karl either by phone or email. Eventually one of his daughters, Cheryl, wrote and explained that he had died. She so kindly mentioned how much he had enjoyed our renewed friendship and discussions of theological and biblical issues. I assured her that I, too, had cherished our continuing friendship. Since I recently turned 90 I assume Karl was about that age, too, when he died. A rare and wonderful friendship, indeed! We had known each other for nearly 70 years. Thanks ever so much, Karl.

Most folks do not know much if anything about Jim Thorpe, one of the greatest athletes of all time. He was raised on an Indian Reservation in Oklahoma and educated at the Carlisle Indian School in Carlisle, PA. Jim Thorpe became an all-around all-star athlete during the early years of the 20th Century. He starred in football, basketball, baseball, and track and field.
Once he and his single teammate, a long-distance runner, beat a college track team in a dual meet with Susquehanna College all by themselves. Thorpe took first place in every event except the mile and two-mile runs. His teammate won those events, and so that allowed second and third place to the other team in every event. The only event Thorpe and his teammate lost was the relay, which requires four runners.
Jim Thorpe went on to be a great professional athlete in both football and baseball, playing and starring on National Football and Major League Baseball teams. When the Olympic Games were revived in 1912 in Stockholm, Sweden, Thorpe not only made the team but won several evets. He was especially strong in the shotput and discus throw, winning first place in both. His specialty was the newly revived ten-event Decathlon. He won that event as well. Obviously, Jim Thorpe was the main event at the 1912 Olympic Games.
After the Olympics Thorpe played both professional baseball and football for a number of years, notably with the New York Giants. In 1953 the American Olympic Committee found out that before the Games Thorpe had played a couple of years of semi-professional baseball. Because this involved earning money as an athlete it made hm officially a “professional”. Therefore, the Committee stripped Thorpe of all his medals. Such rules have been reinterpreted in modern times, as with professional basketball players being allowed to play in the Olympics today. Eventually Thorpes First place medals were returned, but long after his death.
There was a film made in 1952, starring Burt Lancaster as Jim Thorpe, portraying Thorpe’s life and accomplishments. This followed the standard Hollywood practice of that time to have Native characters played by non-native actors. The only Native American actor of any repute at that time was one Jay Silverheels, who played Tonto in the Lone Ranger films. In those days it took a long time for Hollywood to catch up to the times. Even the “Negroes” in regular early vaudeville acts and films were played by white actors.
As all-time records go, Jim Thorpe was not the greatest athlete of color in any given sport or event. I’ve already written about Jesse Owens and Jackie Robinson. Nevertheless, for his time, Thorpe was by far the greatest athlete of color the world has ever seen. Today, of course, athletes of color tend to dominate almost all professional sports. But for his time and place Jim Thorpe was by far the best American athlete of color. Indeed, even by any scale, Thorpe ranks right up there with the best. He truly was an “All-American”.