JFK’s The Soft American and its Impact on Coach Sepulveda and Public Education

While doing research on a book series we are writing on Alamogordo Track and Field and Sports, and the impact of Coaches Robert and Marilyn Sepulveda I came across this amazing take on physical fitness by President JFK. Quite a different approach to what we see today by many. What we see when we reflect back and look at the history is a progressive president focused on fitness and vigor.

The local Alamogordo Public Schools of the early 60s championed the progressive agenda of John F Kennedy of a fit society. During that period Alamogordo was one of the highest paying systems in the country and the high school ranked in the top 10 for excellence in the nation as a result of early integration and a progressive attitude toward diversity and academic and athletic excellence. The APS board of the early 60s hired a group of dedicated school staff professionals, with a focus on academics paired with physical education focus, such as Coaches Bob and Marilyn Sepulveda that championed a curriculum and implemented academic standards paired with physical education programs that continue to this day.

One wonders if we as citizens truly embraced what president Kennedy embraces below with more vigor, dropped our cell phones and cut our screen time; if the national crises of youth diabetes would be so severe and would our diabetes and obesity issues be less and us a healthier and happier nation?

Maybe the softening of America's youth he refers to then, is a wake up call for now and just as relevant to become more physically active and to embrace fitness...

On Dec. 26, 1960, President-elect, John F. Kennedy penned a piece for Sports Illustrated touting the importance of “physical soundness” for Americans — for kids and grown-ups alike. A precursor to today’s America’s Great Outdoor Initiative, which encourages families to get outdoors, it hit the outdoor nail on the proverbial head. Read on to see The Soft American in its entirety and then its impact on APS over the decades…

The Soft American

By President-elect John F. Kennedy

Beginning more than 2,500 years ago, from all quarters of the Greek world men thronged every four years to the sacred grove of Olympia, under the shadow of Mount Cronus, to compete in the most famous athletic contests of history—the Olympian games.

During the contest a sacred truce was observed among all the states of Greece as the best athletes of the Western world competed in boxing and foot races, wrestling and chariot races for the wreath of wild olive which was the prize of victory. When the winners returned to their home cities to lay the Olympian crown in the chief temples they were greeted as heroes and received rich rewards. For the Greeks prized physical excellence and athletic skills among man’s greatest goals and among the prime foundations of a vigorous state.

Thus the same civilizations which produced some of our highest achievements of philosophy and drama, government and art, also gave us a belief in the importance of physical soundness which has become a part of Western tradition; from the mens sana in corpore sano of the Romans to the British belief that the playing fields of Eaton brought victory on the battlefields of Europe. This knowledge, the knowledge that the physical well-being of the citizen is an important foundation for the vigor and vitality of all the activities of the nation, is as old as Western civilization itself. But it is a knowledge which today, in American, we are in danger of forgetting.

The first indication of a decline in the physical strength and ability of young Americans became apparent among United States soldiers in the early stages of the Korean War. The second came when figures were released showing that almost one out of every two young American was being rejected by Selective Service as mentally, morally or physically unfit. But the most startling demonstration of the general physical decline of American youth came when Dr. Hans Kraus and Dr. Sonja Weber revealed the results of 15 years of research centering in the Posture Clinic of New York’s Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital—results of physical fitness tests given to 4,264 children in this country and 2,870 children in Austria, Italy and Switzerland.

The findings showed that despite our unparalleled standard of living, despite our good food and our many playgrounds, despite our emphasis on school athletics, American youth lagged far behind Europeans in physical fitness. Six tests for muscular strength and flexibility were given; 57.9% of the American children failed one or more of these tests, while only 8.7% of the European youngsters failed.

A Consistent Decline

Especially disheartening were the results of the five strength tests: 35.7% of American children failed one or more of these, while only 1.1% of the Europeans failed, and among Austrian and Swiss youth the rate of failure was as low as .5%.

As a result of the alarming Kraus-Weber findings President Eisenhower created a Council on Youth Fitness at the Cabinet level and appointed a Citizens Advisory Committee on the Fitness of American Youth, composed of prominent citizens interested in fitness. Over the past five years the physical fitness of American youth has been discussed in forums, by committees and in leading publications. A 10-point program for physical fitness has been publicized and promoted. Our schools have been urged to give increased attention to the physical well-being of their students. Yet there has been no noticeable improvement. Physical fitness tests conducted last year in Britain and Japan showed that the youth of those countries were considerably more fit than our own children. And the annual physical fitness tests for freshman at Yale University show a consistent decline in the prowess of young American; 51& of the class of 1951 passed the tests, 43% of the class of 1956 passed, and only 38%, a little more than a third, of the class of 1960 succeeded, in passing the not overly rigorous examination.

Of course, physical tests are not infallible. They can distort the true health picture. There are undoubtedly many American youths and adults whose physical fitness matches and exceeds the best of other lands.

But the harsh fact of the matter is that there is also an increasingly large number of young Americans who are neglecting their bodies—whose physical fitness is not what it should be—who are getting soft. And such softness on the part of individual citizens can help to strip and destroy the vitality of a nation.

For the physical vigor of our citizens is one of America’s most precious resources. If we waste and neglect this resource, if we allow it to dwindle and grow soft then we will destroy much of our ability to meet the great and vital challenges which confront our people. We will be unable to realize our full potential as a nation.

Throughout our history we have been challenged to armed conflict by nations which sought to destroy our independence or threatened our freedom. The young men of America have risen to those occasions, giving themselves freely to the rigors and hardships of warfare. But the stamina and strength which the defense of liberty requires are not the product of a few weeks’ basic training or a month’s conditioning. These only come from bodies which have been conditioned by a lifetime of participation in sports and interest in physical activity. Our struggles against aggressors throughout our history have been won on the playgrounds and corner lots and fields of America.

Thus, in a very real and immediate sense, our growing softness, our increasing lack of physical fitness, is a menace to our security.

However, we do not, like the ancient Spartans, wish to train the bodies of our youth to make them more effective warriors. It is our profound hope and expectation that Americans will never again have to expend their strength in armed conflict.

But physical fitness is as vital to the activities of peace as to those of war, especially when our success in those activities may well determine the future of freedom in the years to come. We face in the Soviet Union a powerful and implacable adversary determined to show the world that only the Communist system possesses the vigor and determination necessary to satisfy awakening aspirations for progress and the elimination of poverty and want. To meet the challenge of this enemy will require determination and will and effort on the part of all American. Only if our citizens are physically fit will they be fully capable of such an effort.

For physical fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a healthy body; it is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity. The relationship between the soundness of the body and the activities of the mind is subtle and complex. Much is not yet understood. But we do know what the Greeks knew: that intelligence and skill can only function at the peak of their capacity when the body is healthy and strong; that hardy spirits and tough minds usually inhabit sound bodies.

In this sense, physical fitness is the basis of all the activities of our society. And if our bodies grow soft and inactive, if we fail to encourage physical development and prowess, we will undermine our capacity for thought, for work and for the use of those skills vital to an expanding and complex America.

Thus the physical fitness of our citizens is a vital prerequisite to America’s realization of its full potential as a nation, and to the opportunity of each individual citizen to make full and fruitful use of his capacities.

It is ironic that at a time when the magnitude of our dangers makes the physical fitness of our citizens a matter of increasing importance, it takes greater effort and determination than ever before to build the strength of our bodies. The age of leisure and abundance can destroy vigor and muscle tone as effortlessly as it can gain time. Today human activity, the labor of the human body, is rapidly being engineered out of working life. By the 1970’s, according to many economists, the man who works with his hands will be almost extinct.

Many of the routine physical activities which earlier Americans took for granted are no longer part of our daily life. A single look at the packed parking lot of the average high school will tell us what has happened to the traditional hike to school that helped to build young bodies. The television set, the movies and the myriad conveniences and distractions of modern life all lure our young people away from the strenuous physical activity that is the basis of fitness in youth and in later life.

Now is the Time

Of course, modern advances and increasing leisure can add greatly to the comfort and enjoyment of life. But they must not be confused with indolence, with, in the words of Theodore Roosevelt, “slothful-ease,” with an increasing deterioration of our physical strength. For the strength of our youth and the fitness of our adults are among our most important assets, and this growing decline is a matter of urgent concern to thoughtful Americans.

This is a national problem, and requires national action. President Eisenhower helped show the way through his own interest and by calling national attention to our deteriorating standards of physical fitness. Now it is time for the United States to move forward with a national program to improve the fitness of all Americans.

First: We must establish a White House /Committee on Health and Fitness to formulate and carry out a program to improve the physical condition of the nation. This committee will include the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare and the Secretary of the Interior. The executive order creating this committee will clearly state its purpose, and coordinate its activities with the many federal programs which bear a direct relation to the problem of physical fitness.

Second: The physical fitness of our youth should be made a direct responsibility of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. This department should conduct—through its Office of Education and the National Institutes of Health—research into the development of a physical fitness program for the nation’s public schools. The results of this research shall be made freely available to all who are interested. In addition, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare should use all its existing facilities to attach the lack of youth fitness as a major health problem.

Third: The governor of each state will be invited to attend the annual National Youth Fitness Congress. This congress will examine the progress which has been made in physical fitness during the preceding year, exchange suggestions for improving existing programs and provide an opportunity to encourage the states to implement the physical fitness program drawn up by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Our states are anxious to participate in such programs, to make sure that their youth have the opportunity for full development of their bodies as well as their minds.

Fourth: The President and all departments of government must make it clearly understood that the promotion of sports participation and physical fitness is a basic and continuing policy of the United States. By providing such leadership, by keeping physical fitness in the forefront of the nation’s concerns, the federal government can make a substantial contribution toward improving the health and vigor of our citizens.

But no matter how vigorous the leadership of government, we can fully restore the physical soundness of our nation only if every American is willing to assume responsibility for his own fitness and the fitness of his children. We do not live in a regimented society where men are forced to live their lives in the interest of the state. We are, all of us, as free to direct the activities of our bodies as we are to pursue the objects of our thought. But if we are to retain this freedom, for ourselves and for generations to come, then we must also be willing to work for the physical toughness on which the courage and intelligence and skill of man so largely depend.

All of us must consider our own responsibilities for the physical vigor of our children and of the young men and women of our community. We do not want our children to become a generation of spectators. Rather, we want each of them to be a participant in the vigorous life.

The article established four points as the basis of his proposed program, including a White House Committee on Health and Fitness; direct oversight by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare; an annual Youth Fitness Congress to be attended by state governors; and the assertion that physical fitness was very much the business of the federal government.

From the JFK library archives we learn, a month after the Kennedy inauguration, the new administration convened a conference on physical fitness, reorganized the President's Council on Youth Fitness, and chose a new director, Charles "Bud" Wilkinson, a highly successful University of Oklahoma football coach. True to Kennedy's style, the new executive for the council was named a special consultant to the president. The president's council unquestionably became President Kennedy's council. 

Kennedy's success was not just a matter of bureaucratic changes. Unlike his predecessor, Kennedy addressed the issue of physical fitness frequently in his public pronouncements and assigned new projects to the council. Perhaps his most famous intervention in the area of fitness was the fifty-mile hike. In late 1962, President Kennedy discovered an executive order from Theodore Roosevelt challenging US Marine officers to finish fifty miles in twenty hours. Kennedy passed the document to Marine General David M. Shoup. The president suggested that Shoup bring it up as his own discovery and challenge modern day Marines to duplicate this feat.

Although the council did not have the authority to impose a national program, it developed and promoted a curriculum to improve fitness. The council's fitness curriculum was devised with the cooperation of nineteen major US educational and medical organizations. Two hundred thousand copies were distributed at no cost and another 40,000 were sold. The council engaged in a sweeping drive to achieve widespread participation in the program for the 1961–1962 school year. A core group of almost a quarter of a million schoolchildren took part in pilot projects in six states. At the end of the year, half again as many students passed a physical fitness test as had a year earlier. Furthermore, there was a general improvement of physical education programs around the country.

With success came expansion. Renamed the Council on Physical Fitness, and later the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, it added new programs and awards and enlarged existing programs in later administrations. But the achievement of the Council on Youth Fitness was as much political as educational. In a general sense, the actions of the Kennedy council were a minor triumph of liberal Democratic thinking. A nationwide problem was identified and a national response was developed through the resources of the federal government. The program produced a measurable improvement in fitness nationwide as well as a shift in public attitudes and wider participation. The work of the council also helped identify President Kennedy with fitness, vigor, and preparedness. Energetically promoting the fitness message brought both message and messenger to the public. It is not too much to say that the council's fitness programs were a way of encouraging the nation's youth to participate in the "New Frontier."

The program of JFKs founding had a profound influence on Alamogordo and its public schools.

The school board of the early 1960s understood the importance of the Kennedy programs and its impact on military preparation.

Given Alamogordo was a military focused town the board made the progressive APS school board made the decision to formalize PE curriculum and brought in a group of teachers and coaches to implement a formal program system wide. Coach Bob Sepulveda who the present day Tiger Track and Field is named after was one of those brought in to formalize that curriculum

When the Seprlveda’s began in 1960s,  Coach Bob, went from school to school and changed playground time into a formalized program of physical education with a dedicated curriculum.

The result, years later was healthier students and creating a core of active school aged boys and girls that ultimately won him and the system prestige and numerous state titles in track and field, volleyball and athletic competitions beyond.
 
Many of those student participants successfully graduated with athletic and academic scholarships all the which can be traced back to the vision of John F Kennedy, the foresight of a progressive APS school board of the 1960s, and the dedication of Coach Sepulveda, and others, to implement a successful program who’s impact is remembered and still reflected on by some students and coaches today. 

By the way Coach Bob Sepulveda at 88, can run a 12 minute mile and runs 4 days a week, won 5 medals in the New Mexico Senior Olympics of 2023 and is training with his son Rene with an eye for Nationals this year. Each believe in the vision of fitness and vigor embraced by the vision of John F Kennedy in 1960 as relevant today. 

Source: JFk Library, Coach Bob Sepulveda The Early Days 

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