Robert L. Rice knew what it was like to be poor, having spent his childhood on a farm in Farmington.
Later, he took over a Salt Lake gym, a boxing and weightlifting facility that earned $2 on its first day.
But from those humble beginnings came a man who became an entrepreneur, an innovator and leader in the fitness industry and ultimately a philanthropist.
On Monday, Rice's trek through life continued on an upward path as he was inducted into the David Eccles School of Business Hall of Fame at the University of Utah.
"I'm overwhelmed, to say the least," Rice told the crowd at Rice-Eccles Stadium, named partially for him. "In the cow barn in Farmington, I never thought something like this would ever come to me. It's a great honor."
After becoming a "Mr. Utah" bodybuilding contest winner, Rice took over the gym and built an empire that became known as European Health Spas. By the 1970s, it had more than 200 fitness centers in the U.S. and Canada and became the first public company of its type. Along the way, Rice earned many awards, served on President Nixon's Council on Physical Fitness and, after European Health Spas was sold in 1974, returned to the industry with Spa Fitness Centers Inc.
Speakers Monday called Rice ambitious and passionate. Friend and neighbor Mack Lawrence recalled that Rice "started with nothing" and scrubbed the floors of that first gym to make them ready for the next day's crowd. And Rice, he said, was involved in the fitness business "when the public looked at it with a jaundiced eye."
Gold's Gym Chief Executive Officer Ron Littlebrant said Rice took over the Salt Lake facility at a time when fewer than 500 gyms existed nationwide. Now the country has 29,600 privately owned facilities with a total of 88.5 million members in a $46 billion industry.
Littlebrant said Rice culled the best ideas from other gyms and marketed his facilities to both men and women. The shell corporation he took public saw its stock price rise from 2 cents all the way to $27 per share.
What's more, Littlebrant said Rice, "one of the handful of people that started our industry," actually saved it in 1981 after Congress broached the idea of passing a law to deal with "deceitful" gym operators who sold memberships to gyms that never opened. The bill would have banned selling contracts for health club memberships.
"This bill would have literally closed down the fitness industry in the United States," Littlebrant said. "It would have put almost all of the existing 2,000 health clubs and 5 million members out of business and out of luck."
He said Rice lobbied an unidentified "gentleman" in Washington, D.C., with positive results. "In 1981, Bob Rice single-handedly saved the fitness industry as that bill was never introduced in the legislative floor, yet the bonding issue that protects us all, was," Littlebrant said.
Fellow philanthropist and businessman Spencer F. Eccles used several words to describe Rice: accepting, personable, quiet, humble, even, constant, trustworthy, gracious, "a true gentleman."
"He is a real living model," Eccles said. "He is the epitome, yes, he's the quintessential Horatio Alger man."
Jack Brittain, dean of the business school, called Rice an innovator and "a tremendous asset to this community."
"We really don't think of a service business as being an area of innovation, but Bob definitely was an innovator," Brittain said. "He saw something no one else saw, seized that opportunity, took some very, very big risks and reaped the rewards of it."
University President Michael Young noted that Rice was among the first people to donate $1 million to the U., one of Rice's many activities as a donor.
"He meets the criteria for a truly distinguished career in business and for achievements that serve as a model, an example to others, but also as someone who has taken that business career and not only done well, but done an enormous amount of good for the university, for this community, for the state and indeed for the nation," Young said.
E-mail: bwallace@desnews.com