This photograph shows Cureton standing at a podium during a ceremony at which President Lyndon B. Johnson and the US Junior Chamber of Commerce honored him as "one of the top three physical fitness leaders in the United States."
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Thomas Kirk Cureton (1901-1992) joined the Springfield College faculty in 1929, where he took up George B. Affleck’s research on aquatics. Cureton taught swimming, chemistry, mathematics and applied physics and body mechanics. In 1932, he became the college’s varsity swimming coach and took charge of sixteen aquatic courses. From 1938 to 1948, he served as chairman of the Aquatic Leadership Committee of AAHPER and director of the Physical Fitness Research Laboratory. During World War II, he taught warfare aquatics to military units. Cureton was a pioneer in physical education, and it was his lifelong ambition to put aquatics in the center of that field. Finally, at the age of seventy-two he won five gold medals at the first National Masters Swimming Championships in Chicago. In all, Cureton held fourteen World and National Masters Swimming records.
