Ilsley Boone

The Rev. Ilsley Boone "Uncle Danny" (Born 1879 Brooklyn, NY; Died 1968 Whitehouse, OH) was a charismatic speaker and powerful organizer and is the father of the American Association for Nude Recreation (AANR), then called the American Sunbathing Association (ASA).

Little is known of Boone's early life. He graduated from Brown University in 1904, followed by the Newton Theological Institute three years later. Boone was originally ordained as a Baptist, but in 1921 became pastor of the Church of the Ponds (Dutch Reformed) in Oakland, New Jersey.

Kurt Barthel had formed the American League for Physical Culture (ALPC), America's first nudist organization in 1930. A year and a half later, Boone became the ALPC’s Executive Secretary. Barthel soon asked him to take his place as president of the organization.

In 1931, Boone opened Sunshine Park in Mays Landing, New Jersey (near Atlantic City), and established the ASA national headquarters there. As a stickler to Barthel’s original ideals and behavior guidelines, Uncle Danny tightly controlled the management of each new club, and mandated the full natural regimen of abstinence, calisthenics, mandatory nudity (rain or shine), as well as vegetarianism for all club members and their guests.

Boone began producing the first nudist magazine in the U.S., The Nudist, in 1933, and later, Sunshine & Health under the Sunshine Publishing Company. Even with the genitals airbrushed out of the photos, the U.S. Postal Service decided the materials were obscene and couldn't be distributed through the U.S. mail. This fight was taken all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the Rev. Boone ultimately won the right to distribute nudist materials through the mail. This victory paved the way for not only legitimate nudist magazines and materials but also some of the more seedy versions and, eventually, Hugh Hefner's Playboy Empire.

By August 1951, Boone had been voted out as president of the ASA. A dozen years later, his Sunshine Publishing Company was out of business as well. Nearly broke, Boone spent the remainder of his years living in the Ohio home of National Nudist Council member Edith Church. He died on Thanksgiving Day in 1968.

Books

• Life Among Lobsters (1902)
• The Conquering Christ (1909-1910) (with separate student manual)
• The Senior Teacher (1910)
• The Joys of Nudism (1934)
• The ABC of Nudism: An illustrated handbook on the movement in America, its practice and philosophy (1934)
• Why Nudism: What contribution can the American nudist movement make to happier human lives? (1949)
• Evolutionary Psychology: Hints as to Its Factors, Importance, Uses, and Resulting Changes for Our Whole Social Order (co-authored with Theodore Schroeder, 1949)

Periodicals

• College Hill Verse: Being selections from student publications of Brown University 1894-1904 (editor, 1904)
• The Nudist (1933-1963)
• Sunshine & Health (1933-1963)

See also

• Christian naturism
• Clothes free organizations
• List of public outdoor clothes free places
• Naturism
• Public nudity
• Skinny dipping
• The Naturist Society