For the Whole Man

Eleven years ago Walter Paul Paepcke, millionaire president of Container Corp. of America, motored into the broad valley of Roaring Fork River in Colorado and determined to resurrect the sagging silver-mining town of Aspen. Paepcke built Aspen into a center of muscle and mind, with one of the world's longest ski lifts (14,000 ft.) and summer conferences featuring greats of philosophy, education and musiC -Albert Schweitzer, Reinhold Niebuhr, Jacques Barzun, Mortimer Adler, Igor Stravinsky, et al. This week, with the tax evaluation of Aspen increased sixteenfold, Paepcke, 60, prepared to open a new nonprofit enterprise: The Aspen Health Center for basically healthy but pooped businessmen.

Into the center's sharply modern $250,000 plant (precast concrete, painted white with pastel designs) will troop 40 U.S. executives next month. Entrance requirements: each businessman must agree to stay at least two weeks; each must have a thorough physical exam at home proving that he is basically healthy. The two-week stay will cost $690; wives may take a separate course for $500.

From the day the businessman checks into the health center and is issued his sweat pants until he leaves for home with a plan for daily exercise, he will be under close medical scrutiny and a Spartan regimen laid out by a board of 21 physicians. A 7 a.m. phone call will awaken him for 7:30 breakfast. Then he will bend, stretch, stoop in 30 minutes of calisthenics, plunge into steam and Finnish baths, face up to an "iron virgin" -drenching device which bombards the body with water from high-pressure jets. And after throwing medicine balls, punching bags, lifting dumbbells and a 30-minute rest in the "recovery room," he will sit down to a calorie-controlled luncheon.

In the afternoon, following more baths and massages, the executive will get a free recreation period. For the younger businessman, this will mean mountain climbing, for the middle-aged fishing or swimming, for the older a walk along a valley road. Later, all will listen to a health lecture, study history and contemporary events. Before dinner, the executive will be permitted to have the day's only liquor -but no more than two drinks. In the evenings, there will be lectures or chambermusic, and bed by 9 p.m.

Aspen's Paepcke hopes that management will take careful note of insurance-company statistics indicting businessmen for poor health, and will underwrite stays for executives at his health center as a tax-deductible business expense. He thinks that he has developed a revitalizing program for "the whole man."

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