Personal Fitness: Looking Good/Feeling Good has evolved into a personal program for a healthy lifestyle used nationwide. The program also has been adopted by the Department of Defense for use in their school system in Asia and Europe. The program includes student and teacher editions, student activity handbook, teacher resource CD, test bank CD and DVD of videos.

Williams was honored with the 2005 "Texty" Textbook Excellence Award by the Text and Academic Authors Association. He also received the William Holmes McGuffey Longevity Award by TAA in 2005.

Personal Fitness: Looking Good/Feeling Good was first published in 1986 by Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, Dubuque, Iowa, along with the Personal Fitness: Looking Good/Feeling Good Activity Handbook. He co-authored these textbooks with Emmanouel Harageones, Dewayne Johnson and Charles Smith.

It proved to be just the beginning, as Williams told publishers he envisioned that Personal Fitness: Looking Good/Feeling Good would have a 20-year run. The 5th editions came out in 2005.

With more projects for Personal Fitness: Looking Good/Feeling in the works, including a CD program with supplementary activities for teachers, it appears the textbook and accompanying materials have a long life ahead. In light of the obesity epidemic in children, the program can have a far reach into the future to help make a positive difference. A Spanish edition of the "Personal Fitness" workbook and glossary was published in 2005 to meet the needs of Spanish-speaking students in the classrooms.

Personal Fitness wasn't Williams' first venture into textbook writing; he's been writing textbooks for more than 30 years. His first effort was Fitness: A Way of Life, published in 1975 by Kendall/Hunt Publishing Co., and a second edition came out in 1977. He co-authored the project with Clancy Moore and Alan Moore.

"A past, immediate supervisor wanted me to co-author the book with him, as he encouraged me, a young professor to publish," says Williams of how he got his start. "I also took photos and drew/created Indian ink drawings, drawings that duplicated well and were permanent so each drawing had to be perfect for the first textbook with which I was involved."

At the time, he was a new instructor at the University of Florida, Gainsville, in the Department of General Physical Education. He worked his way up the ranks at the University of Florida over many years. Today he serves at the University of Florida as Senior Associate Dean in the College of Health and Human Performance.

Williams seemed destined for a career in physical education. "I'm originally from Kentucky, and if you couldn't dribble a basketball by the time you were six, you weren't going to be anything," Williams says. "I wanted to be a basketball coach, but my department chair at Western Kentucky University told me I should focus on being an educator."

Through a federal project, Williams was sent to Florida to teach at an all-black student school. He was the first white person to teach at the school. He saw the difference he could make in lives through teaching, and he committed his life to education.

Education is important to his family. His mother was a teacher as well, working in a one-room schoolhouse and riding to her job on horseback. Williams' wife, Linda, was named Teacher of the Year in Florida, for her accomplishments at Fort Clark Middle School in Gainesville. Their daughter, Lunetta, earned her doctorate degree and teaches at the University of North Florida. Their son, Chris, is in his final year in the doctorate program for mechanical engineering at Georgia Tech and plans on becoming a college professor.

A national model today, Personal Fitness: Looking Good/Feeling Good, began as a plan for a statewide course curriculum for middle and high school students. "Initially, there was no plan to write a textbook but the course generated a need," he says. "I noted where there was a high demand and weighed the need as well as the time that I was going to invest."

At one time, physical fitness held a negative connotation. Now it's a desirable goal for all ages. "Through the program, we want children to be physically active to the best of their ability, not according to what other children are doing," Williams says. The program also teaches students goal setting and leadership skills. The combination of classroom discussions and lab work, where the children engage in physical activities, best guarantee the positive benefits of Personal Fitness.

Williams most enjoys writing his textbook materials at his home in Florida. He makes time to write during nights, weekends and holidays.

"Home has been a comfortable, supportive environment for me to write," he says. "I am still able to be involved with the family while writing at home. Additionally, I did not want to complete work at the university and use university time and resources in completing a textbook."

Williams provides the following tips on writing a textbook: *Develop an outline. *Start out organized with file folders for each chapter that includes research articles and pictures. *Research the market and review the competition. * Note the excellent characteristics of all of the competition and exceed those characteristics. *Start writing the easiest chapter, not necessarily the first chapter. *Keep pen and paper by your bed to note ideas at night. *If there are co-authors of the project, set together specifications as to how to submit material, including margins, word processing software and font. Also establish a schedule of deadlines.

Williams touts the benefits of joining TAA and attending the conferences. "Information gained at these conferences would have saved me a lot of trial and error experiences and saved me time," he says. "The presentations at the conference were fantastic and would help all authors at any stage of their writing."

— reported by Kim Seidel, 2006

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