Homer C. Wadsworth

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."