Introduction  The ECRS Approach  Games  Cultural Messages  Play Parties  Dancing  Singing  Exploring Outdoors  Dramatics  Informal Dramatics  Small Scenes  Storytelling  Puppetry  Crafts and Art  Special Populations  Program Planning  » Dear Eddie  Past, Present, Future  Resources

       It is time to say good-bye, old friend. I won't express all my feelings and thoughts at this time hut will concentrate instead on only my feelings and thoughts about you as a recreation leader.
       I have been fortunate to have had access to many of your notes, comments and source materials. Even at that impersonal level, the integral or essential Ed Moyer filters through the words. You clearly integrate the materials, ideas and values into your own professional and personal being. You have written extensive notes from Neva Boyd's work. Sometimes it sounds like a recap. Then suddenly an Ed Moyerism breaks out from the shadow caste by Neva Boyd, an amalgam of her words and their meaning to you. Similarly, you have always shown that very unusual quality of listening to your informant, repetitively if need be, for as long as it takes to honor what she has uniquely to contribute. At the same time you check it out for congruity and fit it with your own experience and understanding. You have respect for the integrity of your "teacher," as well as self-respect leading to growth, new experience, and wisdom, which leads to expanding your consciousness and depth of understanding.
       That is the way you have also treated play materials: respecting them for what they had to contribute to playfulness, enjoyment, and community, while at the same time communicating their essence to people in your own unique and exciting style of leadership.
       I am going to be specific about the values of recreation leadership you practiced. These values rooted themselves in you so that they have become something special by virtue of the particular form each has taken in becoming yours. (Remember Bernard from "Death of a Salesman," who, to Willie's surprise, does not refer to his imminent appearance at the bar of the Supreme Court; Bernard's father quips to Willie, "He doesn't have to talk about it, he is doing it.")
       I will mention a few of my learning experiences while playing with you as leader, because the impact of your leadership, I believe, was so great that many leaders will identify with my play experiences as theirs too. In practically any play session with you, be it play parties, games, square dancing, intensive leadership development, or dramatics, the following are leadership essences that came from you, apparently as natural as breathing itself:

• Knowing your material thoroughly: To you this meant knowing it so well that the material was completely internalized, making it possible for you to shift your focus from concern with the material to the process of play. For example, in games, knowing the object of the game, the step by step breakdown of the activity sequence, the rules, anticipating difficulties which players may have "getting into the game"; how much and what kind of monitoring was required of you as leader: indications from the playing of how the game was going. If it went well, you stopped the game before its peak; if it wasn't going well you asked yourself "What's not happening?" and perhaps restructured it into smaller groups or taught it again if the object of the game had been missed by the participants. Or you might stop the game altogether if your judgment told you that this is the wrong game, or the wrong time, or not for this group.

• Getting the activity going as quickly and as powerfully as possible: You did this in order to create an ambience of freshness, excitement, and interest, which was most likely to engage the participants before self-consciousness could sabotage the enjoyment of the activity. You thus helped to create, in your words, "instant snapshots of the moment".

• Sharing with friends something which you had previously experienced and enjoyed: Your presence from the moment you walked into the room exuded sharing, friendliness and playfulness with a group of peers. This was of primary importance to you, professionally and personally, yet you talked about it so very little. Only in your writing did you acknowledge it; in "Guidelines for Evaluation of Recreation Leadership," out of 26 principles, nine have something to do with sharing and "we" feeling:
  • knows material well enough to share it
  • shows genuine interest in sharing materials
  • shows enthusiasm in sharing
  • creates a feeling that anyone can learn
  • plays with participants
  • creates a we feeling among participants
  • emphasis on group-centered leadership, not ego (me) centered
  • planning and thinking is focused on the group experience
  • recognizes leadership is a functional activity shared by group

• Adequate preparation: Ed, your emphasis on this (including the details of supplies and equipment) never interfered with your own enjoyment of playing for its own sake. There was never a contradiction between planning and structuring the activity, fostering spontaneity in play and the expression of heretofore unexperienced feelings and thoughts.

• Enthusiasm is contagious: This must have been a discovery you made in your development as a leader. As a participant in many of your classes, I never perceived your enthusiasm as phony or staged. It was never centered on Ed Moyer. Your enthusiasm emerged from your own enjoyment and it bubbled over. What you must have discovered from your vantage point as leader was that any participant's genuine enthusiasm has an immediate impact on freeing the whole group from inhibition, and increases spontaneous playfulness. This sounds like a paradox: as the participants spark each other and become more playful. The activity becomes more and more important, as if nothing else existed outside of this place and this moment of time. You gave practical meaning to the concept of activity power. You seemed to get the most out of an activity's power to grab the participants and hold their interest for as long as the activity permitted. For example, "Stir the Mush," which you introduced to ECRS fairly recently, peaks quickly, whereas in Small Scenes the power of the activity is quite prolonged and the peak excitement might not surface until late in the play sessions. Moreover, Ed, by getting the participants into the activity quickly, the activity's unique span of playful actions would catch the participants' attention before diversionary judgments could sabotage participation. Who has time for "Do I like it?" or "Do I look foolish?" while passing on to the next threesome in "Red River Valley"?

       Dr. Furlong, in an article from Psychology Today that you underlined, describes this experience as "Flow":

"When completely immersed in what one is doing one has a self-conscious sense of oneself --- indeed one gains a heightened awareness of physical involvement with the activity: people in flow do not try to concentrate harder, concentration comes automatically; your mind is not wandering, you are not thinking of something else, you are totally involved in what you are doing; your body is awake all over...energy is flowing very smoothly...there is no sense of self, but a merging of action and awareness."

- From "Psychology on the Playing Field." Reprinted with permission from Psychology Today Magazine, Copyright 1976 (PT Partners, L.P.).

       I never heard you use the term "flow," but I am fairly sure you were aware of the dynamics of flow, because you facilitated its release in many of the classes you led.
       One class, in particular, comes to mind: Play Parties at Frost Valley in 1975. The class was held between supper and the evening program, thus enabling a large number of students to attend. You were aware of the kind of lethargy that sometimes grips participants after supper, and consequently started us off with lively and energetic play parties.
       The spark was ignited about half-way through the first session. I don't remember which play party it was, but the enthusiasm exploded. We wanted to do the same one again, and so we did, with your full backing and leadership. You were as the lead horse in a team of horses; we depended on you for instructions, words, and tune. Less and less learning time was needed, and the activity was almost continuous. Not once did you point out to us how excited and exhilarated we had become, or how great we were, as if you had known about flow even then. In Furlong's words, "flow is a floating action in which the individual is aware of his actions, but not aware of his awareness.... If the moment is split so that the player is made to perceive her actions from the outside, then flow halts."
       Not only did that day's class flow, but successive days continued to flow as if the seven days were one continuous class. No warm-up activities were necessary, every play party was the occasion for spontaneous, excited "gamboling" (your term), with laughter, joy, non-self-conscious playfulness with the play party and with each other, and a sense of time suspension. There was an instant but suffusing appreciation of everyone in view (or within hearing), that is Ñ a sense of community.
       I was as totally involved as the next person, but I was aware nevertheless of your role as leader and as participant. Whereas previously you had always joined the group as soon as the activity was moving smoothly, in this class you seemed to be joining the group almost immediately, as if you were aware that the flow demanded as little separation as possible in time and in space between the leader and the participants.
       On this occasion you demonstrated more dramatically than ever before the vital contribution of non charismatic leadership to group cohesion. Your way of communicating with the participants demonstrated how similar you were to everyone else, except for sharing something you thought we might all enjoy playing with together. Even your looking at your little notebook between activities to see what came next communicated a sense of closeness to the rest of us. There was no pretense of being the expert, no proclamation of "I am in command here," but instead a reminder that leadership is with the group, not above it or beyond it.
       There was also your own non-verbal play behavior, that impish look in your eyes as the enjoyment of the participants reached a crescendo of laughter and energetic spontaneity, your looking around at us while playing your hardest, with a smile and hearty chuckle, communicating your love and enjoyment for what we had created together. I think you would deny, Ed, that your play behavior was "modeling," because it was not intentionally so: you played with all your heart, because that was the only way you could play. It helped some of us play at a level we could not have imagined ourselves doing otherwise. When you saw others playing, you must have experienced a sense of communion, a spiritual kinship, with fellow enthusiasts. Those of us who shared that Frost Valley experience with you will recall it with a feeling of exhilaration, joy and love for fellow human beings as well as for life itself. It was for me a peak experience.
       From this brief snapshot of your leadership, Ed, certain critical aspects of the ECRS approach stand out:

• Our focus is on the activity, our concern is with people.
• The activity must be do-able, enjoyable and fulfilling.
• Teaching should be clear, concise, and efficient.
• The comfort of the members of the group is an indispensable ingredient in facilitating the group's focus on the activity.
• Everything the leader does that helps the group stay focused on the activity is a significant contribution to "flow".

       When Eddie spoke with me, I felt that he really listened and that everything else was shut out. I saw him that way with people all the time. Where did he get the strength to he so giving? He knew somehow what people needed, and would be there quietly and simply. I've seen Eddie sit and talk to someone everyone else avoided because of the person's hostility. After a while, the general hostility was gone and Eddie was communicating with another human being. He never intruded with personal questions, but listened and picked up what was important to make the person feel good.