Sought Solitude to Escape Handicap of Fame

Manawatu Times, Volume 59, Issue 221, 21 September 1934, Page 7

Sought Solitude to Escape Handicap of Fame

SELT-IMPOSED EXILE FOR 15 YEARS United Press Association —By Electric Tolegraph— Copyright. Received Thursday, 7 p.in. SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 19. Out of the realm of missing men there walked to-day one of the immortals of American football history, a man who found fame such a handicap that he went into selfimposed exile under an assumed name 15 years ago. Patrick John O’Dea, a slender Australian, came to America in 1896 and made an enviable football record at the University of Wisconsin. In 1919, after practising law and coaching foot Dall teams, he went to an interior of California lumber camp under tho assumed name of “Charles J. Mitchell’’ and became a cleric, a position which he held for 15 years. During these years the whereabouts of O’Dea were a much-discus3ed topic in sporting circles. A report that he had joined the Australian troops in the World War and had become one of the unknown dead was widely credited, To-day, in establishing his identity, he said: “I wanted to get away from what seemed to be all in the past. As Pat O’Dea I seemed very much just the ex-Wisconsin football player. I was very happy as Mitchell for a while. Mitchell was my mother’s name and Charley that of a cousin. Later I often found it rather unpleasant not to be the man I actually am; so I am going to be Pat O’Dea for the. rest of my life. Perhaps I should never have been anything else.’’