August 2014 - Parks & Recreation - 66

NRPA Update
Hall of Fame Spotlight:
Fran Wallach
By Samantha Bartram

here are some individuals in our industry whose influence can be felt
across decades. Fran Wallach, inducted into NRPA's Robert W. Crawford Recreation and Park Hall of Fame in 2013, is one such person.
Known to many as the " mother of playground safety, " Wallach helped to craft
procedures and policies that have benefitted generations of children for whom
the playground is a second home. From her initial involvement in the park and
recreation industry in the late 1960s to her death in 2008, Wallach inspired colleagues with her passion and commitment to safe and abundant playgrounds.
Wallach's career began during service as a volunteer in the Oceanside
New York School District Recreation
Department. She quickly moved on to
work with the Nassau County Parks
and Recreation Department overseeing program development, and
obtained her master's degree in recreation administration, as well as a doctorate in applied human development,
leisure education and gerontology,
both from Columbia University.
In 1971, Wallach discovered her
knack for consulting, eventually establishing her own consulting firm, Total
Recreation Management Services Inc.
During the subsequent decade, she
became involved in several national
organizations dedicated to recreation
and leisure, including NRPA. Wallach gained dozens of awards and
accolades for her professional performance, and passed her wisdom and
experience on to others as a professor
at several renowned institutions.
Wallach's most well-known work in
playground safety began in the 1980s.
In 1988, while serving as president of
Total Recreation Management Services, she became the chair of ASTM

Parks & Recreation

International's subcommittee to create
safety standards for public playground
equipment. She remained the chair of
the Public Playground Committee for
the following 18 years, during which
time the safety standards she helped to
craft became ubiquitous nationwide.
Ken Kutska, currently the executive director of the International
Playground Safety Institute and retired director of parks and planning
of the Wheaton, Illinois, Park District, worked closely with Wallach
and is among the first to trumpet her
praises. " Fran was a continual source
of information and contacts throughout the industry, " Kutska says. " This
was before computers and Wikipedia
and Google searches. Personal relationships were the most important
commodity for our industry in the
'70s and '80s. To use a computer
analogy, Fran was the only file server and document external storage for
public playgrounds short of spending
days in the Library of Congress. "
In 1990, Wallach, alongside Kutska
and fellow colleague Monty Christiansen, convinced then-NRPA Executive Director Dean Tice to convene

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a two-day playground safety institute
before the 1991 NRPA Congress.
That eventually morphed into the
National Playground Safety Institute
(NPSI). By 1994, the NPSI volunteer
executive committee had expanded
significantly. Kutska submitted the
Certified Playground Safety Inspector
(CPSI) course to the NRPA National
Certification Board for approval as
a national certification program, but
Wallach was responsible for creating
the course outline and establishing
the body of knowledge necessary for
creating a national certification exam
on public playground safety.
Kutska concludes, " Fran may have
passed away, but her spirit still lives on
through all those [who] have shared
some of their thoughts and experiences with her throughout their careers
and were inspired by her wisdom, sage
advice, inclusive demeanor and her
incredible, robust, unforgettable belly
laugh. It still brings a smile to us all.
Fran, thanks for the memories. "
Samantha Bartram is the Associate Editor
of Parks & Recreation Magazine (sbartram@
nrpa.org).

August 2014 - Parks & Recreation

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