Obituary ? John Fletcher

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Former athlete worked for Native youth sport

R John Hayes , Windspeaker Staff Writer

John Thomas Fletcher, who worked for two decades to develop the Aboriginal sports movement and the North American Indigenous Games after a long and successful sports career himself, died of a heart attack at his home in Edmonton on Sept. 1. He was 58.

He died after suffering a mild stroke earlier in the day, for which he refused a trip to any hospital for treatment. He had suffered from a heart ailment and was scheduled to undergo major surgery later in September.

Fletcher was Peigan, born Dec. 19, 1937, at Brocket, Alta. From the age of five, he was at Shingwaulk Indian Residential School in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. He attended junior and senior high school in Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., after which he spent three years at the University of Wyoming. He later attended the Michigan College of Mining Technology and, at the end of the 1960s, attended the University of California at Los Angeles.

In school, Fletcher had been a track and field, basketball and football all-star. At Wyoming, he captained the football Cowboys for 1958 to 1960. He went on to play in the system of the National League (of baseball) St. Louis Cardinals and played professional football with the International League Jacksonville Bears, in Florida. He served in the 101st Airborne's Screaming Eagles between 1963 and 1965, spending 13 months in Vietnam.

From 1974 to 1993, Fletcher was on the board of the National Indian Athletic Association, and he was a founder of the Indian Sports Olympics in the 1970s and the North American Indigenous Games, first held in Edmonton in 1990. Fletcher traveled to Blaine, Minn., earlier this summer to attend the third round of the games, in spite of his health.

John Fletcher leaves his wife of 25 years, Mona and his four children Tracy, Tommy, Cheyenne and Christine.