#Camp July 3

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July 2026 several of us are going to take on the 30-Day America at 250 Coach4aday Challenge. Each day we share something about America’s unique and quirky history. It can be about a place, an event, or person. Today let’s look at the role Walter CAMP the Father of American Football had with a Presidential Cabinet.

Six years ago thanks to my friend Butch Gane I read the biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt by H.W Brands. That book opened my eyes to a fascinating chapter of American History when a legendary college football coach named Walter Camp was put in charge of revving up the physical condition of Woodrow Wilson Presidential CABINET. He devised in 1917 a series of exercises for the CABINET.

Day 3-Coach becomes Cabinet Advisor

Walter Camp from 1888 to 1892 was the head football coach at Yale. During this time, the Yale college football team Camp coached won 67 games and only lost 2 games. In 1892 he left Yale and went to coach at Stanford from 92-95. In 1895 he left the west coast and headed back to Connecticut t work for the New Haven Clock Company. He was very successful and eventually he became General Manager. Despite his business success he still was very involved with Football by serving on rules committees and publishing articles about the sport. All that would change in 1917.

With the entry of the United States into World War I in 1917, Camp was appointed director of the U.S. Navy Training Camps’ Physical Development Program.

Disappointed by the sorry shape of most recruits, Camp devised a simple eight-minute exercise routine he called the “Daily Dozen,” a sequence of calisthenic motions including “hands, grind, crawl, wave, hips, grate, curl, weave, head, grasp, crouch and wing.”

In August 1917, Camp assembled members of President Wilson’s CABINET and other officials to get them in shape for the war. Great link including photos of Wilson’s Cabinet working out.

Among them was 35-year-old Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt, who would be paralyzed by polio four years later.

If you want to learn more about Presidential CABINETS here is a great link.

Ben Stein offers up a great summary on a History Channel Video also.

A lesson for any leader of a team including a CABINET is to value shared time together and the importance of fitness.