Shown above are 19 pieces of sporting equipment, seven children and two adults. Together they make up the family of Homer Wadsworth of Kansas City, a man who practices what he has undertaken to preach.
Wadsworth is chairman of the Citizens Advisory Committee to the President's Council on Youth Fitness, a 129-man group that under his highly effective leadership has acquired the determination to see that those charged with developing a fitness program for American children come up with something that meets the very real and very immediate problem. Wadsworth's long-titled group is a large and scattered one dealing perforce through bureaucratic channels with a diffuse problem. To get a clear line on what could be done Wadsworth recently took stock of his own family's accomplishments. Harriet, 14, is a fine swimmer, plays golf with her father; Marjorie, 5, has already learned to swim; Alice, 12, "can do almost anything" from acrobatics to playing the violin; Robert, the oldest and most scholarly at 16, leads a Cub Scout troop, plays golf and basketball; Clark, 9, is the family athlete, a strenuously competitive youngster who thinks and plays baseball "night and day"; Ethel, 7, is a good swimmer. Together the Wadsworth family are campers, hikers and "Kansas City's greatest picnickers." Looking at them, Homer Wadsworth has no difficulty in summing up what he thinks all children everywhere deserve: "the protection of soundly conceived and well-administered community services to promote healthy physical growth and development and the acquisition of modest skills in the constructive arts of leisure."
PHOTO
ARTHUR SIEGEL
