The decades-long campaign to restore Jim Thorpe’s Olympic recognition was not primarily the work of institutions.

It was the work of people — people who knew him, or knew of him, and who refused to accept that the institutional record was the final word.

Grace Thorpe was the most visible of these.

She was Thorpe’s daughter, and she had received the replica medals at the 1983 ceremony.

She spent years following the ceremony arguing that the partial reinstatement — the co-championship designation, the absence of her father’s scores from the official results — was not sufficient.

She was present at every stage of the campaign, providing testimony, providing context, keeping the question alive in conversations with officials and journalists and members of Congress who might have allowed the 1983 ceremony to be the end of the story.