"How’d the vacation go?" we asked a co-worker who had just returned from a week at a well known resort hotel in the Adirondacks. He grimaced. "It would have been great," he told us, "if it hadn’t been for the pain-in-the-neck." they had up there with the title of ‘Activities Director’." He didn’t have to explain. Anybody who has ever gone away for a rest and fallen victim to the re sort practice of "Planned Activities" would sympathize with him.
The "Planned activities" in resort parlance stands for the conviction that the vacationer has to be kept busy every minute of every day. To see that this is accomplished, most big resorts hire an "Activities Director." It is his job to see that the vacationer doesn’t waste his time lying in the sun, sleeping late, or engaging in conversation with somebody he might find interesting.
Usually, he’s an impressively muscular fellow with a face full of teeth and a voice like a cheery foghorn. He’s the man in-motion of resort-dom and in his wake will always be found a trail of perspiration pools. In some places he’s known as the "man who smiles like a razor blade"-and the smile is usually accompanied by his singular call which sounds like this: "Everybody into the pool!" It’s a command trilled with the gift of spurious laughter. And it’s a command that must be obeyed.
To ignore it is to be ostracized, to be a stick-in-the-mud, a poor sport, a party-poop, and, worst of all, to be responsible for replacing 
that buoyant smile with a grimace of disillusionment. "I can’t seem to get to him," he’ll tell the resort manager later and then he’ll go to his room to brood. It may take him as many as 20 pushups to get over your refusal to join the group activity.
He stands in relationship to the vacationing group like a top sergeant to his platoon the main difference being that the Activities Director works them much harder. The result is that many resort-goers spend their entire vacation trying to dodge him. His is the method of the ‘hard sell.’ But why not try the ‘soft sell’ approach? Apropos of that idea, are the pictures on these pages of Yvonne Odin, our conception of the Activities Director we’d most like to be ‘soft sold’ by.
With Yvonne in the pool, "Everybody into the pool!" would become a superfluous phrase. Just try to keep them out! The laziest vacationer would find himself rising early to view this beauty. She would have no trouble rounding up participants for a volleyball game, a croquet tournament, or, even a nature hike. She’d be any resort’s insurance of plenty of activities and lots of return customers. Yvonne’s just the girl to put the fun back into vacations!
