Luther Gulick



Luther Halsey Gulick



Luther Halsey Gulick was born on December 4, 1865 in Honolulu, Hawaii. He was the fifth of seven children of Congregationalist missionaries, Luther Halsey Gulick and Louisa Lewis Gulick. Luther spend the first fifteen years of his life abroad in Hawaii, Italy, Japan, and Spain.

Upon return to the United States in 1880, he enrolled in the preparatory department of Oberlin College until 1882. He enrolled at the Medical College in the City University of New York where he was awarded an M.D, in 1889. He married Charlotte Emily Vetter on August 30, 1887. Together they had six children, Louise, Frances, Charlotte, Katharine, Luther, and John Halsey.




Gulick was a member of the organizing committee of the Boy Scouts of America. In 1905, a number of prominent women approached Gulick to help form a Girls' Branch. This Girls' Branch instituted folk dancing for girls. Gulick himself hoped that such a program would instill the girls with an appreciation for different ethnic traditions (although the majority of the dances used were Swedish) and create a sense of a larger, common sense of an American identity. The book that resulted from this work, The Healthful Art of Dancing (1910) was used into the mid-30s as reference work by dance teachers.


Beginning in 1923 and continuing to this day, the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance (AAHPERD) annually awards the Luther Halsey Gulick Medal, as its highest honor to a distinguished leader in any one of the alliance's fields of activity – a strong sign of Gulick's widespread influence on a number of fields in physical education and recreation.


From an article by Thomas Winter, assistant professor in American culture and literature at Bilkent University, Anakara, Turkey.