A Friend of the Family

 

“Robert J. Roberts, teacher of gymnastics,” pictured above, witnessed and signed Francis Schober’s Petition for Naturalization papers in Boston in February 1909. Francis "Frank" Schober, born in Austria, was Aurelia Plath's father and Sylvia Plath's grandfather and father figure.

 

I looked up "Robert J. Roberts," expecting nothing, and got a surprise.

 

While employed at the Boston YMCA for 40 years, athletics director Roberts revolutionized the gym, installing floor mats, mirrors, and the first indoor track. He invented pulley weights and the “ring” shower head for the one-minute showers he recommended after exercise. Roberts coined the terms “body building” and “medicine ball.” In youth, Robert Jenkins Roberts (1849-1920) modeled for the iconic "Minute Man" statue at Concord, Massachusetts, sculpted by Daniel Chester French.

 

Before Roberts, gyms were “gymnastic” as in the sport of gymnastics: parallel bars, pommels, rings, swings, tumbling; acrobats and ropewalkers used gyms and taught there. Skinny “pigeon-breasted” Roberts in his teens lifted huge heavy “strong man” weights (the only type available) to develop his chest and shoulder muscles, neglecting his back, and learned the hard way how unsafe and unhealthy that was. He conceived of the gym as a place not for stunts but for Everyman to exercise, mildly and daily, all muscle groups for physical, mental, and spiritual health. His ideas caught on. In the above photo, taken in 1901, Roberts was age 51 or 52.

“All exercises,” Roberts opined, “must be safe, short, easy, beneficial, and pleasing.” Roberts invented the 20-minute workout – with light dumbbells; he loathed heavy ones. That daily 20 minutes was all the exercise the body needed, he said. He recommended four small meals a day rather than two large ones, and deep breathing, stretching, fresh air, and daily spiritual reading. Roberts also invented those little cards at the gym on which to record changes in one’s measurements. Roberts was 5’5”, waist 32” and chest 43".

 

It is not known how Roberts met Frank Schober, a waiter then in his late 20s, but nightly at 8:00 the Boston YMCA invited visitors to watch the famous light-dumbbell workout class. Six months' acquaintance was required to serve as a petitioner's character witness, and Schober was granted the favor by this avatar of the Y's founding principles of "muscular Christianity" and helping young immigrants assimilate. Scraps of information do exist about Frank Schober’s athletic interests, and we know "Grampy" swam expertly, Sylvia clinging to his back when she was a child.

Roberts led classes for gym instructors, who spread his ideas nationwide; the YMCA, founded in London in the 1840s, spread them worldwide. The book The Body Builder (1916; reprinted 1921) was compiled and published by the YMCA in Roberts' honor and preserves Roberts’ exercise routines and sayings such as, "Men should look their best in their birthday suit until old age wears it out."