ABSTRACT
‘Writing lives is the devil’, said Virginia Woolf,[ 1 ] though perhaps, as Louis Smith points out, she was only half right, for there is a broad strand of intellectual excitement in struggling to find creative ways of portraying the richness and subtleties of one's subjects' contributions and life-as-lived.[ 2 ] Biography is a messy craft, but it can create lifelong models for us and I will try to hold up, in my own way, a select set of mirrors which best illuminate, contextualize and celebrate Roberta J. Park's vast range of intellectual contributions to sport history and physical education in North America and internationally. Her extensive career as athlete, student, coach, instructor, teacher, researcher, administrator, mentor and ambassador is a unique and powerful example of one woman's agency, determination and success in the hierarchical world of higher education in North America with its ambiguous and shifting attachment to the profession and discipline of physical education and sport science.
