Jim Thorpe was considered America’s greatest athlete during the first half of the twentieth century. Thorpe was a Sac and Fox Indian. He attended the Indian Training School at Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Thorpe died in 1953.
The following year the small communities of Lower Mauch Chunk, Upper Mauch Chunk, and East Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania, decided to become a single town. They called it Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania. The population then was 5,300.
From The Giant Book of More Strange But True Sports Stories by Howard Liss. Illustrations by Joe Mathieu.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Thorpe%2C_Pennsylvania
The population has since decreased to 4,781.
Seems the renaming of the town also came with a healthy dose of family drama. The governor of OK balked at the cost of a monument to Thorpe, so his widow had the body removed during the funeral service. The PA town received permission from Thorpe’s widow to have his body moved to be placed in a tomb there. The widow and the three daughters seemed to all be in favor of the arrangement. However, none of the three sons were. So, after the last daughter died, one of the sons sued the town to have Thorpe’s remains sent back to OK. Long story short, it didn’t work because Thorpe’s body was not buried in OK before being moved to PA. The law under which they had sued addresses remains that were removed from their burial sites and relocated elsewhere.