I just found out that I was written about in our state's paper, The Arkansas Democrat Gazzette. Sorry if this seems like a little horn tooting. I'm just a little proud and wanted to tell someone!
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Fitness panel honors movers and shakers
BY CELIA STOREY ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
The Arkansas Governor’s Council on Fitness honored eight “champions” Wednesday for their efforts to improve the state of Arkansans’ health.
During a ceremony at the state Capitol, Gov. Mike Huckabee thanked the seven winners of the panel’s 2005 Leadership in Fitness Awards. He welcomed the council’s new chairman, Blair Dean of Jonesboro, and gave a special award to its former chairman, Jean Paul Francoeur of Little Rock.
Francoeur stepped down after seven years on the panel because a new business venture was dividing his time. He was appointed by Gov. Bill Clinton and was chairman for four years.
“His special fondness for fitness for kids has shown through in all the things that he’s done,” Huckabee said, “and his own personal enthusiasm and energy for trying to encourage people to live a lifestyle of health has really set a wonderful standard and has been a great personal encouragement to me.”
Huckabee said Francoeur was one of the people who helped him during his personal transformation from obese diabetic to lean marathon runner. He said the owner of JP Fitness studio was “always encouraging, always helpful, constructive, sometimes excruciatingly blunt and, at times, just plain cruel.
“I really learned to love hating this guy.” Dean, the council’s new chairman, is an associate professor of physical education at Arkansas State University at Jonesboro. She was the council’s 2004 winner for outstanding individual leadership. Huckabee joked that she runs marathons in a “disgusting” time, faster than 3:30.
Dean praised the honorees, calling them “the champions of fitness” and saying, “you more than any others have taken seriously the challenge to positively change the health and fitness levels of all Arkansans. You are the leaders in the fight against obesity, and you serve as examples to others that we have to continue to work together to improve our state’s fitness levels.”
HONOREES
The winners for 2005 are:
Corporate leadership: Arkansas Children’s Hospital, for its Travel to Wellness incentives program for employees and the creation of its new employee fitness center.
Governmental agency: Little Rock Air Force Base Health and Wellness Center, which serves service members, their families and retirees. The facility trained 200 leaders who coached fitness efforts in 70 duty sections, leading to 96 percent of 4,800 active-duty members’ passing the Air Force physical fitness test.
Health and fitness club: Arkansas Methodist Medical Center in Paragould, for its employee wellness programs and community outreach.
School of the Year: Russellville Middle School, for applying the President’s Physical Fitness Challenge and opening a fitness room with professional instruction for employees and students.
Senior-citizen leadership: Linda Starr of Conway, owner of The Sporty Runner shoe store and statewide administrator of the Women Run Arkansas club’s annual Women Can Run/Walk training clinics, now in 24 Arkansas cities.
Leadership by a group: Women Run Arkansas, for engaging more than 1,000 women and girls in a 10-week walking and running program in 2005.
Individual leadership: Andy Core of Fayetteville, host of the AETN program Fighting Fat and a popular speaker on behalf of healthful habits.
The annual awards are based upon nomination packets written by honorees or their supporters.
MUCH TO DO
Asked for valedictory thoughts about why Arkansans have done poorly in assessments of health and fitness, Francoeur said, “In some ways the environment doesn’t really support it.”
The weather is hot and humid, which discourages outdoor activity. And the state’s cities aren’t designed to make exercise part of daily life.
“That’s changing, but infrastructure takes a lot of money and takes a lot of time,” he said.
The right infrastructure, he said, including bike lanes, sidewalks and communities designed so people can walk where they need to go, makes it easy to be active “even if they’re not lifting weights or trying to exercise,” he said. Public transportation encourages walking, too, because people walk to the bus or train stops.
“All those little extra steps add up. We need to have a lot more bike lanes and walking parks,” he said. “The River Trial is an example of that, but 10 years from now, I would like to see that River Trail leading up into every single major neighborhood so people can ride their bikes to work” and to school.
As for his years on the council, he said, “We did accomplish a lot, but we’ve still got so far to go. In a way all we did was put the brakes on a train wreck” by encouraging people to notice what is happening to the health of the state and its children.
“When you put the brakes on a train, it doesn’t stop on a dime. It takes a while because you’ve got tons and tons and tons of weight behind it — and that’s a really appropriate symbol in this case too,” he said.
“But there’s some important things being done here, and the governor’s doing a lot of important things nationally, but I think it’s going to be a long time before we’re able to see what we’re dealing with and how to fix the problem” of sedentary and therefore unhealthy citizens.
“The governor’s council, we’ve been on top of the mountain screaming the truth for years: ‘Wake up everybody, if you don’t exercise, you’re going to be sick!’” Francoeur said. This story was published Monday, March 20, 2006
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