Mary Ann Wilson, the Spokane founder and face of the television workout program \u201cSit and Be Fit,\u201d died Wednesday at the age of 87. <\/p>\n
Filmed at the KSPS-PBS television station on the South Hill near Ferris High School, Wilson developed and began producing her gentle workout show in 1987 and continued \u2013 albeit with a handful of extended breaks \u2013 until she was 85 in 2023. Picked up nationally, Spokane viewers have long seen Wilson and her chair at 11:30 a.m. on 7.1 KSPS, played after weekday morning kids shows.<\/p>\n
Seniors, people with disabilities and kids all loved the show, writing in frequently, Wilson\u2019s four adult children said. Robert Wilson, 56, said his mom was driven by her viewers, insisting on personally taking phone calls to discuss mobility issues with strangers and returning handwritten letters to everyone who sent one in to her. His brother Jim Wilson, 62, said that as a businessman, that part of her drove him crazy at times.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe aren\u2019t talking 15 minutes, we\u2019re talking, like, 45 minutes on the phone,\u201d he said, putting his palms to his temples in mock exasperation.<\/p>\n
\u201cSit and Be Fit\u201d was always a family affair, with Wilson\u2019s kids and 13 grandkids making guest appearances, helping on set and working behind the curtain. Gretchen Cowan, 64, was the official producer for the show, often joining her mother on screen. The calm-voiced, technically minded woman the camera captured wasn\u2019t just an act, her kids said, \u201cit was really her.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cowan and her siblings remember their mom as being very pure, religious and political \u2013 and an avid supporter of her grandson\u2019s soccer games at Gonzaga University. She was a practicing Presbyterian, and encouraged her kids to reach out to elected officials for change. She saw no issue with using anatomical terms like \u201cpubic bone\u201d and \u201curinary incontinence\u201d on television, much to one granddaughter\u2019s dismay at the time. Despite living in Washington, she remained an avid Steelers fan as well.<\/p>\n
Wilson\u2019s daughter Amy Jo LeLaCheur, 58, said that her mom and her son Tyler were particularly close. Tyler worked as a cameraman for \u201cSit and Be Fit\u201d and stood up for his grandma online when people made fun of her show. With Tyler having many health conditions, LeLaCheur said that Wilson\u2019s help watching him \u2013 say, when it was time for church on a Sunday morning \u2013 \u201clet me have a life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tyler LeLaCheur died in 2009 at age 17.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey had a special bond,\u201d LeLaCheur said.<\/p>\n
But \u201cSit and Be Fit\u201d was hardly the beginning of Wilson\u2019s story. Born on the south side of Pittsburg in 1938, she was the only child of Louis Bucci and Mary Ann Butkowska.<\/p>\n
She grew up in the area, attending the now-closed St. Francis Medical Center\u2019s School of Nursing to become a registered nurse. Cowan said that her mother \u201cwanted to always get out of Pittsburgh.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want to bash on Pittsburgh, but at the time it was, you know, smoky air,\u201d Cowan said. \u201cShe lived above a bar with her parents. So, she moved to California.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her half-sister, Anna Marie Bucci, 65, said that when Wilson came to Pittsburgh to visit, the pair would look up at her old window from the street, and Wilson told her that she would look outside and think, \u201cThere has to be something better.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was at a California party where Wilson met the man her family describes as \u201cthe love of her life\u201d \u2013 Marine Corps Major Jim Wilson. When her then-fianc\u00e9 forgot her birthday, Jim Wilson brought her a rose and took her to church.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a done deal,\u201d Cowan said.<\/p>\n
The couple got engaged, and Jim Wilson stood her up at the alter at least once \u2013 Bucci said three times, but Cowan has only heard of once. Either way, they did marry in 1960 (Jim Wilson had to plan the wedding this time), and Bucci said that he was \u201cthe best husband ever\u201d for her sister.<\/p>\n
The couple had four kids together, and Mary Ann Wilson stopped her work as an RN to care for them as the family moved around the country for Jim Wilson\u2019s military career. They planned to move to Colorado and open a ski resort together once he retired from the military, Bucci said. Jim Wilson died suddenly of a heart attack in 1971, only a month and a half after moving to Virginia.<\/p>\n
Devastated, the family moved to Spokane. The city was Jim Wilson\u2019s hometown, and the family had lived in the area for a year when he was deployed to Vietnam. They moved back largely to be near his parents.<\/p>\n
The tragedy never swayed Mary Ann Wilson\u2019s dedication to taking care of her children, though.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was the best mom,\u201d Rob Wilson said, even though he admits to walking the line of a mischievous streak his two older siblings began in their teens.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just admired her for not ever showing us \u2013 not ever breaking down,\u201d Cowan said. \u201cJust letting us know everything\u2019s going to be alright, and she put her life and soul into making each dream come true.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was while she was teaching exercise classes in Spokane to earn some money in the early 1980s that she got the idea for \u201cSit and Be Fit.\u201d Bucci said that people would come up to Wilson after yoga and ask for advice because it was too strenuous for them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe lightbulb went off in her head. There\u2019s a whole population that needs something else,\u201d Bucci said. \u201cYou can sit in a chair and still exercise.\u201d<\/p>\n
In one of her final newsletters, Mary Ann Wilson wrote to her \u201cexercise friends\u201d about what she was feeling when she walked into the KSPS studio to tape the first episodes of her show.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was excited beyond words,\u201d she wrote. \u201cMy enthusiasm was driven by a heartfelt belief that this program would prove itself by helping viewers feel and function better regardless of their physical limitations or medical conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n
The show took off, quickly becoming broadcast nationally, and viewers wrote to Mary Ann Wilson about how her simple exercises had helped them stay mobile or recover from injury. People would send in photos of their kids doing exercises with towels as props along to her show. One of the more impactful stories on Mary Ann Wilson, Bucci said, was that of a man whose garage door fell on him, and doctors told him he would never walk again. He wrote to her that starting off just doing her gentle exercises from his bed, he was eventually able to walk again.<\/p>\n
Cowan said that any attempts to remove the show are consistently met with people calling in until they re-air it. Fred Rogers, from Mister Rogers\u2019 Neighborhood, was another big advocate for \u201cSit and Be Fit\u201d in the television world, Rob Wilson said.<\/p>\n
In 2017, Mary Ann Wilson was inducted into the National Fitness Hall of Fame.<\/p>\n
It was viewer requests that kept her coming in to record more shows, even though Jim Wilson said it was something of a financial marvel that she managed. LeLaCheur said her mother made \u201cmany sacrifices\u201d to keep the show going.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe really felt like it was God\u2019s mission and calling for her,\u201d LeLaCheur said. <\/p>\n
The show became a 501(c)3 nonprofit in 2000 because it wasn\u2019t making money. <\/p>\n
\u201cEach time someone approached me with a grandiose business proposal, a quiet voice in my heart said, \u201cDon\u2019t do it,\u201d \u201d Mary Ann Wilson wrote in the same newsletter. \u201c\u2019Stay true to the needs of the people you serve.\u2019 Thanks to that inner guidance, I didn\u2019t fall prey to profit-driven ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite a lifetime of fitness, a heart condition was what eventually caught up with Mary Ann Wilson.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe lived a very pure life, her body was just \u2013\u201d Cowan said. \u201cIt\u2019s just hard when you\u2019ve been so fit and strong all your life. You\u2019re the symbol of fitness to a lot of people.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSit and Be Fit\u201d will continue to be broadcast on KSPS PBS, weekdays at 11:30 a.m.<\/p>\n
This story has been updated to correct the weekly runtime of Sit and Be Fit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mary Ann Wilson, the Spokane founder and face of the television workout program \u201cSit and Be Fit,\u201d died…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":363105,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[1198,210,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-363104","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fitness","8":"tag-fitness","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115510672515838109","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363104\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}