an interview with Richard Keelor

Richard Keelor is President and CEO of the Sugar Association, with headquarters in Washington, D.C. He also serves as President of BE ACTIVE AMERICA!, a national physical activity advocacy training program dedicated to teaching individuals and organization how to change the system. He is a former public school physical education teacher and athletic coach. From 1972-82, he served as Director of Program Development for the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports. He is past president of the Association for Worksite Health Promotion and was one of ten Americans honored as Healthy American Fitness Leaders in 1982.

In his college years, Richard captained the wrestling and football teams at Long Beach State University. He won the NCAA Pacific Coast Wrestling Championship, was All Coast in football and was honored as Athlete of the Year. Signed by the Los Angeles Rams, he played three years of professional football before entering the coaching profession. He was named California Athletic Director of the Year and Coach of the Year by the Los Angeles Times and he even won the World Australian Pillow Fight Contest two years in a row.

Speaking of pillow fights, his wife Carolyn Keelor, also a fitness professional, initiated the national employee fitness program for the U.S. Customs Service.

Don: Richard, you have had many passionate causes and grand visions in the years I have known you and vastly more, no doubt, before I had that good fortune. What is driving you these days?

Richard Keelor: I’m fascinated by the nature of change and its implication to health promotion and physical fitness. In my judgment, our health and physical education/fitness professions have failed miserably! Why? Not for lack of passion or purpose, but for want of the skills necessary to be serious players in a system driven by democratic, capitalistic dynamics. There are certain rules and skills essential to the change process. In general this is a mystery to most health and fitness professionals. That’s why we’re losing.

Don: How did this happen? What are the problems with the health and physical education/fitness professions that have led to this situation?

Richard Keelor: I believe one of our core problems is that we have confused scholarship with leadership. Of course scientific documentation is essential to understand and justify our activities, but we have allowed science to become the focus. We lack an understanding of how to generate changes that makes the science work. Instead, we focus on an endless search for more redundant data. But, we ignore whether it is applied in a significant manner.

Don: How about a short example?

Richard Keelor: Well, we settle for attending annual conferences and listening to entertaining and humorous speakers, like Don Ardell!

Don: Hey, don’t mess with this part of the system, OK?

Richard Keelor: Well, it’s fun for me, too, but you know as well as I do that all we’re doing is telling the true believers what they already know. We must do better than that. We are not challenging ourselves; we’re not uncovering strategies and building effective coalitions for changing the status quo. Meanwhile, as a nation, we have degenerated into one of the most inactive and obese populations in human history. Science is on our side and that’s great. Oh yeah, and the Surgeon General loves us too. But so what? Neither of these has slowed down the increase in obesity or inactivity.

Don: Well, haven’t you sort of jumped ship, gone over to the other side, more or less? What are you doing on land in private industry, when out there on the high seas of health and fitness, the ships are sinking?

Richard Keelor: I like the accountability factor. In private industry, we either win or die. There is not much room for just surviving. That’s also why I liked coaching. Many, if not most of the people in the allied health professions, can survive oblivious of accountability. If a football team doesn't win enough games, they fire the coach. On the other hand, if health and physical education/fitness teachers fail to facilitate conditions that enable underdeveloped, obese students to acquire the skills and learn the activities to protect their health, we give them tenure! Senior academic professionals are not held accountable for their failure to properly prepare future professionals on how to create meaningful changes in the environment. Too often they focus on too little (e.g., how albino rats can be made to develop gluteus maximus strength while running on a treadmill with ankle weights).

I would like to see leaders of our professional associations like ACSM or AAHPERD challenge, if not demand, their members seek effective solutions to the nation’s growing health problems, rather than defer as they do to the pharmaceutical and medical establishments. We need a national agenda for change based on self-management, wellness, fitness and the like and less focus on spending hundreds of billions of dollars on drugs and medical interventions. Of course the reason medicine and pharmaceuticals are far ahead in the parade is that they understand and can apply the dynamics of change. So they win. Not that the allied fields of health and physical education lost to them. We’ve never been on the playing field. We need health and physical education/fitness professionals who are aware of and skilled in the change strategies to bring about this revolution in thinking and policy at every level. Until we do, we’ll get the same results.

Don: Wow. You have not changed much over the years! Good on you, as my Aussie friends would say. Could you sum all that up in a Keeloresque call to arms?

Richard Keelor: That’s not true, I have changed. For one thing, I rely less on my profession and more on business and industry to drive the changes we all desire. I also focus my attention only on those who want to learn and apply the skills for change. Our basic theory is: What we learn, we practice. What we practice, we become. What we become has consequences.

Don: OK. Let’s go back a bit. Can you give me a quick personal history of your own evolution leading you to these impressions of your old profession?

Richard Keelor: Sure. I spent 10 years as a public school physical education teacher, 10 years with the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports and the last twenty years in private industry. I would have enjoyed staying in the health and physical education/fitness profession. But, as I told you, I hate to lose! And, we are losing, to put it politely (rather than bluntly acknowledging that we have lost!)

I believe only one state still requires quality physical education in elementary and high school levels. Employee health and fitness programs, once prosperous in the late 70’s and mid-80’s, have basically gone belly up. And, the state governors’ councils on fitness/wellness and such have mostly disappeared. Not surprisingly, inactivity is at record levels among all age groups and obesity has reached epidemic proportions.

Don: Didn’t you try to create a few political action groups at one time?

Richard Keelor: Yes. About 10 years ago, you were part of a group of fitness conspirators who were dedicated to overthrowing sedentary America. We had scores of health and fitness leaders, including our chairman, the former Secretary for Health and Human Services, Dr. Louis W. Sullivan, in forming The Congress for National Health and Fitness. At our “summit meeting” in Washington, D.C., we dedicated ourselves to political and social change to enhance health and fitness for all Americans. Among other objectives, we tried to promote the realization of the Surgeon General’s Year 2000 goals for a healthier nation.

Don: As I recall, we tried to connect our efforts with the Presidential election taking place that year, 1992.

Richard Keelor: That’s right. We held an historic debate that focused attention on which of the candidates would be best for our purposes. This was held at the annual conference of the Association for Fitness in Business in San Diego. We had official representatives of each Presidential candidate at the meeting. They faced off in front of about 300 professionals on the question about which candidate had the most to offer those who were fighting for the health and physical fitness of the American people.

Don: If I’m not mistaken, it was not a memorable debate.

Richard Keelor: No, it was not. It was more like a tepid discussion, but at least both parties thought the issues were sufficiently important (and we were sufficiently consequential) to send top representatives to the meeting! Wow, we thought for a while there that fitness was on the political map, at last!

We followed up as best we could, but got little or no support from physical activity and health professional groups. They would not press the challenge or run to daylight; instead, they yawned. We could not get follow up, or anyone to lend a hand. Consequently, we lost momentum, took on water and sunk. We tried again at the time of the 1996 Presidential election, but when we ran the flag up the pole, nobody saluted or showed interest. Eventually, the Congress for National Health and Fitness faded into the sunset.

Don: What I don’t understand is how you can pontificate to such an extent about health and fitness and be employed by the sugar industry who markets a product that causes obesity, hyperactivity, diabetes, hemorrhoids and God know what else?

Richard Keelor: That’s a fair question, although you display an appalling lack of science-based information on the subject. But I suspect you’re doing a little leg pulling. The truth is sugar is not a causative factor in any disease condition. According to me? No, according to the World Health Organization, USDA, FDA, the American Dietetic Association, the American Diabetes Association and the list goes on and on. I joined the sugar industry because the leaders convinced me they want to be a part of the solution to obesity and inactivity, not just whine about unfounded attacks on their product. And I will compare their financial and in-kind contributions to promote physical activity over the past three years to any food or beverage company their size in America.

Don: O.K. Richard, should we all retreat to the sugar and other private industries, and let the devil or whomever take the hindmost, that is, the obese American, or should we try something else?

Richard Keelor: Something else, of course. There's a 1996 book I’d recommend, for starters. It's called Deep Change: Discovering the Leader Within (Jossey-Bass Business & Management Series) written by Robert E. Quinn. Quinn explains the potential we all have to be agents of change and to increase our effectiveness in achieving our goals to shape up America. He demonstrates the importance of fundamental change as a way to prosper in an environment in crisis, such as is the case with our health system and disastrous national health habits. The book could be a survival manual for fitness professionals who must find leadership power and learn how to succeed in the face of change. Our profession cannot remain static; we must adapt new skills and understandings if we intend to be taken seriously in the future. We still have a remarkable potential and capacity, as Quinn writes, “to change ourselves and, ultimately, our organizations.” All lasting changes begins first within a single individual, then the family, then the community, the nation, the planet and then the cosmos. But first, it must begin with me.

Don: Any parting words for visitors to SeekWellness?

Richard Keelor: I may sound a bit opinionated and sometimes cynical. Some of my friends are less kind and say I'm just being a contrary donkey’s rear-end. But, I have much hope for the future - especially for young professionals who still have fire in the belly and a passion to make a difference. That's why we have reorganized the Congress on National Health and Fitness. Today, we call it “Be Active America!”

Don: How can people learn more about Be Active America?

Richard Keelor: The usual ways, call, write, or e-mail as follows: Be Active America! Ph. (202) 785-9770; Fax (202) 785-5019; Visit our Website at: http://www.beactiveamerica.org or write: Be Active America, 1101 15th St. NW, Suite 600, Washington, D.C. 20005 or e-mail yours truly at: keelor@sugar.org.

July 2001