CHANGED IDENTITY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21911, 21 September 1934, Page 11

CHANGED IDENTITY

MAN IN AMERICA OWN NAME RESUMED (Received September 20 , 5.25 p.m.) 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 self-imposed exile under an assumed name 15 years ago. Patrick John O'Dea, the man in question, a slender Australian, came to America in 1896. He » n enviable football record at the University of Wisconsin. In 1919, after practising law and coaching football teams he went into the interior of California to a lumber camp and assumed the name of "Charles J. Mitchell." O'Dea became a clerk, and held the position for 15 years, during which the question of his whereabouts was a much discussed topic in sporting circles. A report that he had joined the Australian troops in the Great War and become one of the unknown dead was widely credited. To-day, in establishing his identity, O'Dea said: "I wanted to get away from what seemed to me to be all in the past. As Pat O'Dea I seemed to be very much just a former Wisconsin football player. " I was very happy as ' Mitchell ' for a while. ' Mitchell ' is my mother's name and ' Charley ' that of a cousin. Later I have often found it rather unpleasant not to be the man I actually am so I am going to be Pat O'Dea for the rast of my life. Perhaps I should never have been anything else."