Law school students will try to give Jim Thorpe Borough an upper hand in keeping the remains of the famous Olympian along Route 903.

On Thursday night, council unanimously approved retaining the University of Pennsylvania Law School Supreme Court Clinic to represent the borough in a potential appeal over Jim Thorpe's final resting place.Council President Greg Strubinger said the clinic, which provides hands-on legal experience in Supreme Court litigation to law students, would provide its services at no cost.The borough is waiting to find out if relatives of Jim Thorpe and several Native American tribe members will prepare a petition to review an Oct. 23 Supreme Court ruling that denied their request to move Thorpe's body back to his native Oklahoma.United States Court of Appeals Circuit Justice Samuel Alito on Tuesday agreed to extend the appeal deadline to June 3.Thorpe, a multi-sport Olympic gold medalist, died in California in 1953 without a will. His estate was assigned to his third wife, Patricia, who buried him in what is now the borough of Jim Thorpe.His body has been interred along Route 903 in the borough since 1954. The Sac and Fox tribes and William and Richard Thorpe argue that a 1990 federal law gives them the right to take the body back to Thorpe's native Oklahoma.The Stanford Law School Supreme Court Litigation Clinic will be assisting the tribes and William and Richard Thorpe.The town will have a birthday celebration from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. today and from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday.Support fire trainingIn another unanimous vote on Thursday, Jim Thorpe council voted to support a countywide emergency services training facility.Prior to the vote, Carbon County Commissioners' Chairman Wayne Nothstein said he had received letters of support from 18 of the county's 23 municipalities.The letters will be used as the county tries to secure grant funding for the estimated $10 million project.Nothstein said the project would provide fire departments with live fire training sites, a drill tower and other training necessities; as well as give police, county departments and EMS services classroom and training options that normally are completed in other counties."We are moving the Emergency Management Agency to the training center and we're hoping they can coordinate things and that this won't trigger any additional county employees," Nothstein said in response to questions from residents and council members. "We're also hoping four or five funding sources can finance most of this. If we need to downsize, we'll downsize. We can always cut back, but it's harder to add more to the plans later."Jim Thorpe Mayor Michael Sofranko spoke in favor of the project."Other municipalities may not reap the benefits of what this training facility does, but with the sheer amount of activity we have here in the borough, if we don't have training and certifications, we open ourselves up to an enormous amount of liability," he said. "We get 6,000 people a weekend here. Our emergency services have to be trained to handle it."