The Early Days – Texas – 1967 – 1970 My earliest exposure to any sort of Martial Arts came in February of 1967 when my then seventeen-year-old younger brother Pat demonstrated his Taekwondo green belt skills in our Grandparents’ front yard in Hamilton, Texas. Five years his senior, I had always been able to manhandle him as older brothers often…

A conventional childhood was a luxury that I was not able to experience. Having been born with a rare condition known as Retinitis Pigmentosa or RP, standard childhood sports and activities were simply something I was not able to participate in. RP is a degenerative condition that causes severe vision loss. It meant that sports such as baseball, football, soccer,…

It’s funny how as adults we tell our children they can be anything they want to be when they grow up. We encourage and cultivate their want to be doctors, engineers, even space cowboys, but at what point do we stop having that same belief in ourselves? At what age do we wake up and decide that we are probably…

The martial arts explosion I was introduced to martial arts by my grandfather. He’d take me to the neighborhood drive-in theater to watch the latest martial arts movies. I was hooked from the moment my grandfather introduced me to it. Later in my tweens, the TV series Kung Fu, starring David Carradine, portrayed a Chinese monk—Kwai Chang Caine—on a quest…