Tony A. Mobley graduated in 1960 from Georgetown College in Kentucky, where he studied physics and physical education. While at Georgetown, Mobley decided to focus on recreation for a career after taking several courses as part of the physical education curriculum. Indiana University was recommended to him as a place to obtain a master’s degree in recreation and park administration, so he moved to Indiana and completed that goal in 1962. The following year, Mobley returned to Indiana University to complete a doctoral degree in recreation and park administration. During the doctoral program, his interest turned toward higher education, and when Mobley graduated, he became assistant professor of recreation and park administration at Western Illinois University in Macomb in 1965. This was the start of a very illustrious academic career that led to him being appointed Dean of the School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation at Indiana University at the remarkably young age of 38. Mobley received the Pugsley Medal in 2006 for his outstanding leadership contributions to park and recreation education, multiple professional organizations in the field, and as executive director of the National Recreation Foundation (1978-1979).
Parks & Recreation magazine: Tell us about one of the most memorable moments of your career related to NRPA.
Tony Mobley: The most significant thing is my work with Don Henkel over a nine-year period in getting the national accrediting body to officially recognize NRPA’s accrediting program for colleges and universities. It was called the Council on Post-Secondary Accreditation then and it was the accrediting body of national accrediting bodies. They recognized specialized accrediting groups, and at that point, we had the accreditation up and running for colleges and universities, but we had not gotten recognition from this group. Several people worked on getting accreditation, but Don and I were probably the two that stuck with it the longest. The meeting was held in a hotel in Chicago and I decided to go. We couldn’t say anything, but they were discussing our responses. Don couldn’t go and when they voted to approve it, I remember running out into the hallway to the nearest payphone, calling Don and telling him it’d been done.
P&R: What is the greatest accomplishment of your career?
Mobley: To see so many of the students that I’ve worked with go on to do so well in the field and all of their accomplishments, I think, are probably the greatest highlight of my career. To be able to see how well they’ve done and to follow their careers is probably one of the most rewarding things. And, then of course, being president of NRPA was quite an honor. The president didn’t do as much then as they do now…it was more an honorary thing than it was a work thing, although there was some work to be done. Things ran pretty smoothly during my time. I was president in 1979…the youngest president at that time and the first educator to be president.
P&R: What do you feel is the most impactful change that’s taken place in the parks and recreation field during the past 50 years?
Mobley: Increased public awareness of the importance of parks and recreation in everybody’s lives — that’s one of the things we worked hard on. That was the challenge I worked on when I was involved…I think people kind of took it for granted. I remember when I was at Western Illinois before going to Penn State and then coming here to Indiana, I used to get asked to speak to a lot of the service clubs, and it was kind of “here comes the recreation guy.” You could tell they didn’t take it very seriously because these were hard-working business and professional-type guys. The attitude was, “We’ve got a program today, and this guy is going to talk about recreation.”
It dawned on me that wasn’t the way to go at it, so instead of even saying anything about recreation, I started talking about “non-work-life experiences.” And, almost immediately, I was taken seriously because they all had those things, but they didn’t want to admit to having “recreation.” That’s emblematic of what’s happened over the years and now that parks have become a big thing, recreation has become a big thing. Leisure, I think, is still the best description of the experience now, but it’s probably the most misunderstood. I always said that the mission of recreation and parks is to improve the quality of life for all of our citizens through creative, meaningful, leisure experiences. And that’s what I feel the mission is, but I’m not sure that’s understood very widely. You have to go on to explain what you’re talking about. I would probably say that that’s been the biggest change. There’ve been a lot of changes that have developed over the years. A lot of them have been related to economics and the political atmosphere. But, in terms of a fundamental change in the field, that’s probably it.
P&R: What is the most important issue facing the field today?
Mobley: The economic situation at the end of 2007 and then the move toward everybody wanting to pay fewer taxes and cutting back the funding for public parks and recreation. That’s forced agencies to do more with fees and charges, which then begins to exclude some of the very people that the field started with in terms of the settlement houses and San Gardens in Boston and in other major cities around the country. The other thing is that when we look at the whole field, and NRPA has done this in a way, and I can’t say it’s the wrong thing to do, but it’s gone exclusively toward public parks and recreation. But, when you look at recreation in its broadest sense, you’re talking about the entertainment industry, you’re talking about all the different things people do for recreation that are not done in public parks and recreation places. And, NRPA has sort of limited itself to that, and I understand why, but I think, to help people understand that it’s a much broader concept is one of the issues we need to deal with.
P&R: What would you like to see from NRPA in the next 50 years?
Mobley: NRPA is becoming more like a trade association and an advocacy group, too, and that gets close to another thing I think we need: more public visibility, public awareness and advocacy. But, I’d like to see NRPA bring in more strong citizen participants and broaden the concept of recreation and parks to go beyond just public parks and recreation.
Sonia Myrick is the Managing Editor of Parks & Recreation magazine.