 |
|
|
Dr. Bill Reger-Nash
Morgantown, WV
Local Dealer: On the Run
Sports: Bicycling, walking
Dr. Bill Reger-Nash is essentially a teacher. However, he is one with chutzpah and spirit. Whatever he does, he does with gusto.
Bill spent 10 years of his life as a religious monk, hitch hiked across the USA in 1971, sailed across the Pacific Ocean and the bicycled across the continental USA in 1982, ran 15 marathons between 1979 and 1990, has coached football, basketball, soccer and sailing.
Although he no longer runs since he has a permanently broken navicular bone in his right foot (industrial fall caused a break that will not heal), he bicycles 10 miles each way to work year round in hilly West Virginia. Reger-Nash maintains: "With the right InSport clothing, a person can bike in any kind of weather." His cycling includes a month in Mainland China (1983) and New Zealand (1994). In 2003 he cycled 193 miles along the C&O Canal in one day. Annually, he now joins colleagues from Australia for professional/leisure cycling annually. In 2003, two blokes from Australia and Bill did the 200-kilometer P'tit Train du Nord in Canada, and in 2004 the same crew did the 225 mile KATY Trail across Missouri (on the same weekend there were 80 tornados spotted across the state).
This 62 year old former marathoner began teaching French and Spanish in 1965. Over the next six years, he also coached football, basketball, soccer and track. He has been quick to rush in, for example, when reporting to teach at the Wellesley junior high school in the Boston area is 1969, he hoped to coach football. Instead, the school needed a soccer coach. He agreed to take the head-coaching job since otherwise there would be no soccer team. The first soccer game he saw in his life, he "coached" his team to a 4-1 victory, and then won the Junior High Soccer Suburban League championships in 1969.
He left the Boston area in 1971 and hitchhiked to California en route to grad school in Hawaii. Soon after he arrived in Hawaii, he was smitten with sailing, began competitive sailing as a foredeck expert, and landed a head sailing position for the Kaneohe Yacht Club just 1.5 years after his first sailing experience. He served as the head sailing instructor at the Kaneohe Yacht Club for ten years, all the while earning his masters degrees in educational psychology and political science at the University of Hawaii.
In 1981, he sailed to Washington State on a 37' sloop with a family of four and then crossed the continental US on the bike he brought across the Pacific. In four month, he traversed 5700 miles (2100 sailing and 3600 biking) in non-motorized transportation from Hawaii to West Virginia.
At age 39, he enrolled in the doctoral program in exercise physiology at West Virginia University, while working part time in cardiac and pulmonary rehabilitation at the Wheeling Hospital. He earned his doctoral degree in 1984. He was elected to the WV State of Delegates in 1986, became the director of the Bayer Wellness Program in Wellsburg, WV in 1988, and started his academic career at West Virginia University in 1991. Reger-Nash has never had a job he did not like, but he loves being a professor at WVU.
The size of Reger-Nash's classroom has been growing. In 1965, he began teaching French and Spanish and athletic skills to youth. In 1988 his classroom became the 10,000 person community of Wellsburg, WV (Bayer Wellness Program). In 2001, he designed and implemented the nationally acclaimed Wheeling Walks campaign, which promoted 30 minutes or more of daily walking amount he 32,000 residents of Wheeling, WV. Now, he has undertaken the promotion of walking as an antidote to overweight and obesity among the 350,000 residents of north central West Virginia.
Although Reger-Nash admittedly has lost some of his competitive edge, he annually "competes" in the mountains of West Virginia. He believes he can "locker-room race" with the best of them. He enjoys bantering with his buddies about what he (imagines he) can do athletically.
Reger-Nash may no longer win metals for his athletic prowess (there was a day when he could hang with pretty-good competitors), this has not slowed down his participation. He finished second in a local triathlon this past year, running for the first time in 15 years (broken foot notwithstanding). He loves to share his enthusiasm for physical activity, exercise and the outdoors with folk of all ages and abilities.
Who knows what the size of his future classrooms will be. He is currently working with public health professionals in Minnesota and Hawaii to develop social marketing strategies to prmote walking statewide.
Bill Reger-Nash challenges almost anyone who will listen, "Isn't it time you started walking?"
|
|
|
|
|
