THE PENALTY OF FAME

Stratford Evening Post, Volume III, Issue 155, 21 September 1934, Page 5

THE PENALTY OF FAME

Man's Self-imposed Exile I BACK TO CIVILISATION Press Association —OoDyrlght 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, 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 football teams, he went into the interior of California to a lumber camp under the assumed name of "Charles J. Mitchell." He became a clerk, a position which he held for 15 years. During these years the whereabouts of O'Dea was a much discussed topic in sporting circles. A report that he joined the Australian troops in the World War and became one of the unknown dead was widely credited. To-day in establishing his identity ne said: "I wanted to get away from what seemed to me to be all in the past. As Pat O'Dea 1 seemed very much just an 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. I should never have been anything else."