When I view the picture that accompanies this blog post, it reminds me of the old adage “Is the glass half full, or is it half empty?”

In the first week of July, I was able to fly out to Indianapolis to meet up with the ACSM Office of Museum, History and Archives’ liasons, Creative Services Manger David Brewer and Vice President of Operations Katherine Schowengerdt, as well as Interim CEO Katie Feltman. As many of you know, ACSM is selling the building that it has called home since the groundbreaking ceremony that occurred on Dec. 15, 1983. And now ACSM is looking to the future some 40+ years after the ground was broken in 1983. So it was my role, along with the ACSM staff, to go into the building and to secure the history of our organization collected since 1954 — some 70+ years!

I flew into Indianapolis on Monday, July 1, in preparation for our task. On Tuesday I was picked up by Katherine, and we were on our way to 401 West Michigan Street, our former headquarters. For those of you who may not know, the building has not been highly used since the pandemic started in early 2020, and on this hot summer day, the air conditioning wasn’t working either. There were two main aspects of the buidling that we were mainly focused on: the basement, where a number of our historical files have been kept throughout the years, and the room that was known as the ACSM Library. Our chief goal while there was to secure and preserve our history, mainly to be boxed up for storage, as ACSM begins to plan for our future.

The great thing about this visit is that it allowed multiple eyes to view what we had and what needed to be preserved. In large part, all of the historically relevant files and boxes in the basement were brought upstairs to be prepared for storage. And then, as we went through the ACSM Library, anything that referred to ACSM in any form was boxed up to be stored and reviewed at a later date. The task was not easy, and thankfully water was provided by Katherine on day one and by Dave on day two, for the heat rose to a very high level throughout each day. But all in all, we were able to stay relatively hydrated and felt confident that we were securing our organization’s history.

On that Tuesday evening, I was fortunate to have dinner with both Katherine and Dave as well as Katie. As a volunteer leader, one of the the common themes I thought about during this trip was just how invested ACSM leadership and its staff were in the preservation of our history — which there is a lot of! This was perhaps one of the highlights of my trip, leaving thinking about how highly invested our ACSM leaders are in the preservation of our history. Approximately 70+ years of ACSM history was secured and will be on its way to storage, if it isn’t there already. Our future task will be to go through this vast pile of history, or what I would call “historical gems,” such as the picture of a young Dr. Josephine Rathbone that I came across, or the picture of Drs. D.B. Dill and Per-Olof Åstrand conducting an aerobic performance assessment with a female subject on a treadmill.

It is the hope of our office, now that the securing of our history from the building has occurred, that with the help of an archivist in the future, we will be able to comb through all of it, organize and digitize it, and then develop a plan for how to best share it with the most important part of our organization: our membership.

Now, back to the picture at the top of this blog. Is the sun setting, or is it rising? Well, the sun is setting on this current ACSM property: I took this picture on the morning of my second day, and as I was getting in my Uber back to the airport to fly home, I honestly felt a little sad about the sale of our former headquarters. But then quickly after, I had feelings of excitement and hope thinking about ACSM as it moves forward. Because ACSM is more than just a building. It is a collection of people — staff, volunteer leaders and members. And as ACSM President Dr. Stella Volpe stated at the 2024 annual meeting held in Boston this year, “We are ACSM.”

So, the place ACSM calls home may change, but the “we” of ACSM is only growing. The sun is rising, and the glass is just not half full — it’s filling.

Sean Walsh, Ph.D., FACSM, is a professor in the Department of Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance at Central Connecticut State University. He is a past president of the New England Chapter of the American College of Sports Medicine (NEACSM) and serves as the historian to both ACSM and NEACSM.