The Des Moines Register from Des Moines, Iowa • Page 31

ike INSIDE SFXTION TV listings Classifieds Comics October 9, 1986 2 I IOWA BOY Aerobics op tempo in. towns REGISTER PHOTOS BY HARRY IAUMERT 4. 1 Fort Madison fitness freaks groan for tone By WILLIAM RYBERG Of Tht Rtfllsttr's Davenport Burtou 9 ORT MADISON. IA. "No cheat-; ing," Marie Walters admonished, just before her class of 18 women and one man began an exercise t.

nicknamed "the tummy terror." Lying on their backs on exercise benches, with knees bent and feet in the air, they used their ankles to grip soccer-sized rubber balls. While up-tempo music played, Walters counted cadence, and her students, dressed in a variety of colorful leotards and sweat suits, straightened and bent their legs. "Out. Two. Three.

Four. Hold it. Five. Six. Seven.

Eight Take a deep breath. Blow it out I like those," Walters said. Groans indicated the feeling might not be shared. But each student had paid for the privilege of doing the exercise and all would be back for more. As in the big cities, aerobic exercise and physical fitness are alive and well and apparently growing in smaller hubs across Iowa.

Indeed, the business may be healthier in places like this than in the metropolitan areas where it first flourished. Health club memberships are down in cities like Chicago, St. Louis and Minneapolis, said Pat Killingsworth, president of the U.S. Aerobics Association in Baraboo, an organization that certifies aerobics instructors. A place to grow "In Iowa, I'd say, it's still growing," especially in smaller cities, Killingsworth said.

The likely reason: The trend arrived a little later, so it's peaking later, too. Killingsworth said probably any town of 1,000 or more has at least one established program in a small health club, a dance studio or a church basement part of a growth spurt similar to the boom in small-town videotape rental shops. "In the same way there's going to be a shake-out, too," he said. In Fort Madison, pop. 13,500, aerobics enthu siasts soon will choose from: TheYMCA.

Two businesses that are primarily children's dance studios Walters' studio, called Marie's Bodies and Soles, and the Top Hatter Dance Studio. The Top Hatter dropped the classes for a while but is bringing them back. Another business, Safe Aerobic Fitness and Exercise. "It's doing wonderful," said Sue Pie-per, 27, who operates SAFE in a former appliance store downtown. Enrollment is about 200.

About five sessions are offered each day, the first at 6 a.m. and the last at 7 p.m. Ten part-timers instruct. Six or so students are men, a number she finds low. "In a smaller town, I think they don't know what other people will think if they go," Pieper said.

"It's not a big money-maker by any means. I make a little bit but it's not enough to support a family of five." Her husband farms. Business is good across town at Marie's, too, but Walters says her children's dance lessons provide more income. Her aerobics classes cost $20 a month; students can attend as many as they want. Many are dedicated exercisers, but Walters, 36, believes that in general Iowans could stand some shaping up.

"Iowa is still behind the rest of the world when it comes to working out," said Walters, an enthusiastic instructor who's thinking about recording her own aerobics videotape. "You have to work out on a regular basis," she said. "Women in Iowa don't take it seriously enough. It's work. You can't just go in and tiptoe through the tulips and get results." Her classes involve floor and bench exercises, stretching and use of hand weights, elements of an exercise called low-impact aerobics.

She also teaches dance aerobics. Nancy Dean, 27, regularly drives 15 miles from rural Donnellson to Walters' studio. "It makes me feel better," she said after a class. "I just feel like I have more energy." Carol Greenwald, 27, a dental assistant, agreed: "I go home now, and I'm going until about 10 or 1 1 at night," doing dishes and laundry and cleaning house. "I used to just sit and watch TV and eat." Room for expansion Interest may have peaked in larger cities.

At the Des Moines YWCA, enrollment has leveled off, said fitness director Jill Mehlhaf. She said some 400 people take aerobic classes each day over the lunch hour or in the evening. In Davenport, Mary Rehmann, adult program director at the Family said class enrollments are holding steady. But some apparently still see room for expansion in the fitness market in bigger Iowa cities. Mehlhaf noted that two new health clubs are being built on Des Moines' west side.

In Des Moines and Davenport, as in smaller towns, interest is focusing on low-impact aerobics, which appear to be gaining favor over aerobic exercise routines that emphasize continuous running, jumping or bouncing in place. Instructors say the continuous impacts of those exercises resulted in complaints of lower back pain and problems with knees, ankles and feet. "Most people can't take that kind of jarring," said Gigi Plagge, who offers low-impact aerobics at her dance studio, Dancin' With Gigi, in Eldridge, population 3,300. If low-impact exercise is one trend in the industry, greater self-regulation is another. Various industry associations provide training and certification for instructors, but anyone, trained or not, can start an aerobics business.

Caveat emptor "You just rent the space; put up your mirrors, and you're in business," said Killingsworth. That means the field is wide open, but also full of pitfalls for unwary customers and untrained operators alike. "If you don't know what you're doing, somebody can get hurt," said Walters. Pieper said her liability insurance alone costs $1,700 a year. Just how big the aerobics business is in Iowa is unclear.

Operators don't have to register with any state agency. Killingsworth estimates his association will have certified 300 to 400 Iowa instructors by the end of the year. In California, another trade group, the International Dance-Exercise Association reports that its number of Iowa members increased from 37 to 86 between 1985 and 1986. In LeClaire, population 2,900, the LeClaire Recreation Center just started offering a class. And in Keosauqua, population 1,000, Debbie Powell is getting ready to start leading classes again this fall.

While there's continued interest locally, Powell wonders whether Iowa's beleaguered economy will have an impact. "Because we're a farming community and rural, it's been difficult for a lot of people to spare the money." to 'Dynasty' of style; black tie is preferred. After Six, the manufacturer of formal wear, has 12 to 15 styles in half a dozen colors, ranging from Fiesta Blue to Purple Haze. A white ivory style with a high-peak lapel, featured on the television series "Dynasty," is "the hottest thing in the country," according to John McTi-gue, executive vice president of the Philadelphia-based company. Dinner jackets are regaining a popularity lost in the anti-establishment days of the 1960s and '70s, McTigue said.

After Six sells "hundreds of thousands" of dinner jackets a year, he said, 80 percent of them to rental agencies. "They are a very 'in' item." McTigue credited the elegance of the Reagan administration for the regenerated popularity of tuxedos. President Reagan, he said, "has given a big push to the formal look." The Tuxedo Club appears to have been less fortunate. The Autumn Ball that the young Lorillard once scandalized was abandoned more than a decade ago, although the club still is hired out for formal affairs. i and Instructor Marie Walters counts cadence.

for a little more? prince's tailor in London (relocated, but still flourishing) and had a similar jacket made. Back in Tuxedo Park, Potter's new look was a hit. Soon hotel magnate William Waldorf Astor and others wore tuxes to various social affairs. The event that gave the tuxedo a certain notoriety, however, took place at the Tuxedo Club's first Autumn Ball, on Oct. 10, 1886.

That night, Griswold Lorillard, Pierre's youngest son, and a small group of friends decided to spoof the fashion style by lopping the tails off their formal dress coats. Town Topics, a New York gossip sheet, noted that Lorillard appeared in a "tailless dress coat and waistcoat of scarlet satin, looking for all the world like a royal footman" and sniffed that he and his cronies "ought to have been put in straitjackets long ago." Today's tux ranges from the gold lame of Lib-erace to the rainbow hues popular for wedding parties because they complement the bridesmaids' dresses. The smart set knows that the tailless tuxedo jacket is worn with black tie. The word tuxedo itself, say those who know, is out watch the news? Fort Madison aerobics: Nancy Menke stretches Walters leads a class: One, two, three, four, ready 1 Jl MVA.at Little Burt gives a darn BURT, IA. It's been a couple of weeks, and only now am I beginning to sort out my feelings about what I saw in this little northwest Iowa town (pop.

600), about Burt i des moines) what I experienced here. Months ago, I began receiving letters and phone calls from a woman named Alice Benck, asking me if I would come speak at some function of "Exceptional Oppor tunities, Inc. She said it like I was supposed to know what it was. I didn't. bhe seemed disappointed, if not miffed, that I didn't.

Now I know why. Alice Benck is a good heart who has given so much of herself to Exceptional Opportunities a residential and treatment program tor mentally handicapped children and adults for the past 18 years that she can hardly believe it when she runs into people who haven't gotten the message she constantly spreads. The message, I would learn, is this: "When you work with people who have these kinds of problems, you have to give a darn. And then give an other darn, and another, and another." Her persistence is legendary around here. When it comes to this pro gram," Howard Wycoff, the mayor of Burt, told me later, "what she decides she needs, she's almost always gonna get." She got me.

She got me good. She eventually made me realize that all those months I was rather curtly say ing, "Now, what is this program again and why is it you want me to come what I was really doing was hearing "mentally handicapped" and then tuning out. I wasn giving a darn. I was telling myself, like so many of us normies tell ourselves, that I'm too busy scooting around Iowa, too busy making the next buck, too busy worry ing about Big Things to take time for something like a program for the men tally handicapped. I was falling into the same awful mindset that so many have on the mentally handicapped the old "out of sight, out of mind." What a schnook.

For when Alice got me here, she first of all showed me one of the warmest, i most wonderful evenings I've had in a long time. Burt calls itself "The Little Town With A Big Heart And A Helping Hand. I now believe it. She walked me into a gymnasium filled by 900 people, and, remember, this is a town of only 600. They were 900 people who ve given a darn and continue to do so.

They had come together for an even ing billed as "Homecoming '86" and explained as being a chance for the people of Exceptional Opportunities and for the people of Burt and the rest of Kossuth County to thank each other for being here. "Without the hospitality, patience and love the town of Burt has given us over the years, said Alice Benck, "we wouldn't have this program." And Mayor Wycoff: "Without Exceptional Opportunities, this town would be in a world of hurt. The reason they originally located it here was that we had so many empty buildings they could get cheap. If they hadn't come, I'd hate to think of how many more empty buildings we'd have by now." Indeed, they celebrated. The high school band played.

The community chorus sang. Coffee, juice and goodies were abundant. We all shared 90 minutes of fun and good feeling. The next morning, Alice and others on the staff showed me Exceptional Opportunities, which is now out of the old buildings and into new, specially-built ones. There are two schools, the living quarters and a Work Activity Center where five cottage industries operate.

It's clean, cheery, busy and upbeat. I got big, spontaneous hugs from a lot of handicapped people that for those several, regrettable months had been out of my sight, out of my mind, out of my conscience. There are 100 of these "clients" here with handicaps ranging from just this side of profound to, well, hopeless. They are taught, treated with dignity, taken care of and flat-out loved by a staff of about 120, meaning the attention is almost always one-to-one. It's expensive running a program like Exceptional Opportunities, which survives on government and private money that is donated, begged, borrowed whatever Alice and the athers have to do to get it.

I couldn't do it, I confessed to Alice Benck. I'd get to where I was consumed by giving a darn. I just couldn't work in a situation like this. "Not everybody can," she said. Thank God, I've thought to myself a lundred times since, for those who an and do.

Churfe Offenburger -W- fc, Tux at 100: From royalty 1 1 ltM KnliM-Rlddw NmHPin Tie dub that gave it its name still exists, but the ball that made it famous is gone and it's unlikely that Friday's 100th anniversary of the tuxedo will set off any fanfare. The Tuxedo Club remains a focus of social activity for residents of Tuxedo Park, an enclave 30 miles northwest of Manhattan developed in 1886 by tobacco merchant Pierre Loril-lard IV as a hunting resort with clubhouse, 15 five-bedroom cottages, stables and tennis courts." That summer of '86, James Brown Potter, a friend of Lorillard's, spent a holiday in England, where he and his wife, Cora, met the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, at a court ball. Invited to spend a weekend at Sandringham with the prince, who had taken a fancy to Potter's wife, Potter learned to his surprise that Edward, a setter of fashion trends, had given up wearing a formal tailcoat at dinners. Instead, he wore a short black jacket adapted from the white jackets worn by members of the Royal Yacht Club at an ball. Potter went to Henry Poole the are you gonna Can we talk or By DAVE RHFJN Rnlsttr TV Editor FINE TUNING I beat welcomes its most bal- 1 lyhooed addition tonight I when "The Late Show" starring Joan Rivers debuts on about 140 television stations.

jty -f toin- Both of Iowa's independent TV stations KDSM-TV in Des Moines play in Iowa. "I'm not looking for Joan Rivers to come out and have incredible ratings," says Brandt. "But we intend to give it a good, long shot. If it doesn't do well in November a key ratings period, we will let it go through the February ratings period." In Brandt's mind, the key question is, "How much money can we make off Joan Rivers? Will it give us a return off of our investment? "It will not be as successful as Fox is hyping it, but we look at the show to be mildly successful." Both Thompson and Brandt look at FEME TUNING Johnny Carson, David Letterman, David Brenner, Dick Cavett and Ted Kop-pel if you count ABC's news-analysis show "Nightline." "Some people look at Rivers as being abrasive, but she has actually outperformed Carson in Des Moines," says Tommy Thompson, KDSM general manager. Thompson was alluding to Des Moines-area ratings during Rivers' stints as "The Tonight Show" guest host for more than two years.

"Of course, that doesn't say what would happen on a regular basis," adds Thompson. Gary Brandt, general manager at KLJB, is taking a conservative approach in forecasting how Rivers will and KLJB-TV in Davenport will carry the live, one-hour weeknight program at 10 p.m., directly opposite local news broadcasts and the first 30 minutes of "The Tonight Show." Rivers' "The Late Show" is the centerpiece and starting point of an effort by Fox, owned by Rupert Murdoch, to create a fourth TV network. The effort will continue in March, when five hours of weekend, prime-time programs will be offered to Fox's roster of mostly independent stations. When Rivers spews her "can we talk" calling card tonight, competition will begin in earnest to see if the comedienne's so-called "abrasive" style can win viewers in an already crowded late-night talk show field that includes The only other independent TV sta tion serving Iowa, KPTM-TV in Omaha, turned down the show when it was offered by the fledging Fox Broadcasting Network. Please rum to Page 1 2T Joan Rivers.