Swimming sensation: former Olympian Adolph Kiefer has revolutionized the aquatics field--one fin at a time.

If you are in the aquatics field, you probably work with equipment invented by Adolph Kiefer. The former Olympian and world record holder in the 100-meter backstroke has spent his life inventing water safety products and equipment. He might be known best for his 1967 non-turbulent racing lane invention, which calms quakes in water, thereby allowing a swimmer to glide through faster.

But the man who would be king of the aquatics world owes his ideas to the U.S. Navy. After Kiefer graduated from the University of Texas, he joined the Navy and subsequently led a nationwide change in naval swimming instruction. "Here we have the Navy with non-swimmers and that didn't make sense to me at all," Kiefer says.

Once Kiefer learned that in the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack, more sailors died of drowning than bullet wounds, he went to Washington, D.C., and convinced an admiral with the U.S. Naval Operations that a change in swimming instruction was needed to prevent further drowning. He was 23.

"I was very unhappy with the course," Kiefer says. "It was incomplete, it didn't have anything about how-to-rescue activities; it didn't have ... many, many things."

In addition to writing four instruction manuals for the Navy, he also updated the lifejackets they wore from the Kapok tree ("burned better than paper") to polyvinyl chloride (PVC) foam. But the significant contributions Kiefer made to the Navy cannot overshadow his commitment to water safety for civilians. By the time he was 27, Kiefer started Kiefer & Associates, an aquatics supply company that has been the distributor of hundreds of safety products.

In 1948, he developed the first nylon racing suit, which was a huge upgrade from the cotton suits he used to wear as a competitive swimmer. Speedo later manufactured the suit making it pervasive in all athletic attire. He also is credited with updating snorkeling gear, creating concave water skis, water-saving equipment used by lifeguards and the Coast Guard, racing equipment and therapeutic recreation products.

The Navy may have given Kiefer the inspiration to improve aquatics safety, but it was his more than 10-year relationship with the Sears Roebuck research team that solidified him as the premiere aquatics inventor. "Right out of the Navy with no money and two children and a young wife, starting my own business with very little money, I needed someone to listen to me," he remembers.

Not only did the buyers at Sears listen to Kiefer, they extended him a line of credit that allowed him to create the molds needed for his first invention--swimming fins.

Half a century later, the 86-year-old still holds patent rights to 12 of about 20 inventions, and continues to develop more concepts. He is an inductee of the International Swimming Hall of Fame in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and has sat on three different presidents' Council on Physical Fitness and Sports.

Even with all of his accomplishments, Kiefer says more is needed to educate the public on water safety According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about 4,000 people die from drowning in the United States each year. Drowning was a leading cause of unintentional injury death among all ages in 1998, and the second leading cause of unintentional injury death among children ages 1-14 that same year.

Kiefer wants to see a federal swimming manual and a code of ethics on water safety created for nationwide distribution. He also believes it is NRPA's responsibility to be a leader in the water safety cause. "[The park and recreation agencies] need basic guidance, but it has to be simple and effective."