Dennis Parrish

In 2005 Dennis Parrish saw a Carlisle Indian School football photograph of the 1908 team. He immediately knew who Jim Thorpe was but did not know who the other players were. So, he started collecting digital copies of all the teams and players whenever possible. Over a period of time he collected hundreds of photographs. He then put in the hours and effort to identify the people in the photographs. He perused over half a million pages of newspapers to pin down who was who in the photographs. He decided to use Facebook as a platform and a means to further identity the players by contacting their descendants. With their help he was able to identify most of the players in every photograph.

Parrish spent thousands of hours collecting the information for the biographies of the players. His plan was always to flood the internet with information about the accomplishments of the players. A goal would be to encourage feature movies to highlight the popularity of the players and to feature their plights and struggles of their lives. No one should ever forget the lives that shined there and that were lost at Carlisle.

You may connect with Parrish’s Facebook public group page titled Carlisle Indian School Football Immortals.