Vann and her husband, Lou, are among 6 million people who have used the Wellness Center since it opened in 1996. Hundreds of people—including a rare presidential triumvirate: Donna E. Shalala, Edward T. Foote II, and Henry King Stanford—gathered for the center’s tenth anniversary celebration this January, all swapping stories about the facility that is much more than a gym.

“I always felt we should do more than throw out the ball and let people play,” says Norm Parsons, director of wellness and recreation. “It should be about offering people programs that encourage a lifestyle of responsible choices.”

When Parsons joined the University in 1972, recreational facilities were meager. The 1975 addition of the 25,000-square-foot Lane Center was an improvement, but the facility became insufficient as student population increased.

Lonnie Kantor, B.S. ’67, M.Ed. ’71, Ed.S. ’72, UM Alumni Association president at the time, reinforced the need to replace the Lane Center with something that would help recruit and retain students and employees. “That’s a sweat box for jocks,” she would say. “You need people to think about wellness.”

It was a bold statement, considering “wellness wasn’t even a word in the dictionary at that time,” notes Patty Swift, assistant director of budget and marketing for the Wellness Center. Thus began the push for a “Wellness Center”—not a hard-body gym, but a physical, intellectual, spiritual, and social mecca with state-of-the-art fitness equipment, lap swimming pool, saunas, massage therapy, exercise studios, racquetball and squash courts, cooking classes, self-defense classes, a smoking cessation program, and a juice bar. But without support from students, whose fees would subsidize the cost, the push would hit a roadblock.

When Irwin Raij, B.B.A. ’92, began his second term as Student Government president in 1991, he and fellow officers agreed that a Wellness Center should be the student leaders’ top priority for the academic year. “I visited Florida State University’s new campus recreation center and took note of the incredible amount of activity,” Raij recalls.

Raij corralled student body support with help from Student Bar Association president Ravi Brammer, A.B. ’90, J.D. ’93, and Graduate Student Association president Manny Tejeda, A.B. ’85, M.S.Ed. ’89, Ph.D. ’94. Brandishing T-shirts, buttons, and banners, “the three amigos,” as Parsons calls them, secured a majority vote on a student referendum to institute fees that would support the Wellness Center.

“This building is a tribute to student leadership, and it continues in a new generation with Peter Maki,” President Shalala said at the anniversary celebration. She was talking about a similar effort by Maki, current Student Government president, and other student leaders to drive a referendum vote for a new Student Activities Center. Maki lauds the efforts of the three amigos for paving his way, and for 40 other reasons—the pounds he has lost since becoming a Wellness Center devotee.

Last semester 91 percent of resident students used the 120,000-square-foot Wellness Center, and Parsons seems to know just about all of them. “My favorite aspect is walking around, saying hi to people and watching them enjoy life,” he says.

Nearly 1,800 alumni and 1,300 employees and their dependents a year also use the center, and the Shape Up program gives employees an added incentive: 50 percent of membership fees returned when they log a specified number of fitness hours.

The Department of Wellness and Recreation, as it is named today, continuously updates the Wellness Center. A future expansion into the courtyard will double the fitness room and add two multipurpose rooms on the upper level. This year a 60,000-square-foot counterpart will open on the medical campus.

While you might not find Pearl Vann at Cardio Kickboxing or Guts-n-Butts, like clockwork she wheels her suitcase to the pool each day, stopping momentarily to thank Parsons for her fountain of youth. Dashing all around her are the flushed cheeks and fit bodies of young and old, all “doing well and feeling fine.”

Learn more about Wellness Center alumni membership at www.miami.edu/wellness.