Introduction

Welcome to my blog. I’m starting this for my students at Shelton Martial Arts Academy, (but I know that others may run across it and read it). I hope that the thoughts I record here will help my students expand their knowledge beyond what we can cover in class, and that it will encourage them to think critically about the lessons they receive from me and from anyone else they may train with.

My Early Training

I began my martial arts journey in 1971 at the age of 17. I was relatively naïve, not sophisticated in the least, but a voracious absorber of information, both through reading and just observing anything I was exposed to. Things were so different then, no internet, no cell phones, only three black and white TV channels that all signed off at midnight. We learned through newspapers, magazines, books, and face to face from teachers, family, or friends.

My first instructors were great, they were very tough and physical men who knew how to fight and had good instincts, much of their fighting knowledge was gained prior to their martial arts training began as their young lives involved rough neighborhoods and street violence, one, Lou Wagner, was a Marine. They were professional businessmen when I joined their program and those days of street fights were in their past, but they approached their own training as men who had been street fighters. They wanted us to be tough and skilled more than anything else.

These men, Lou Wagner and Chuck Eddleman, were in their late 20’s, in great shape, and were very enthusiastic, driven men. They were both green belts when they started the Korean Karate program I enrolled in at the Burlington, NC YMCA. They operated under the supervision of Jack Everette, 2nd Dan, who oversaw several branches of the Triad Karate Club in YMCA’s and YWCA’s from Winston-Salem, to Burlington and who was a frequent visitor/instructor who conducted all of our testing’s until his untimely death in 1975. By that time Lou and Chuck were both 1st Dan and were given authority to take over the Triad Karate Club by Dr. Dae Shik Kim, Jack Everett’s Master.

What is relevant about all this for my students is that, while my instructors were very good fighters, and very bright men, their years of experience were few. They studied and absorbed all they could from Jack Everette and from the magazines of the day and a few books. The resources available today didn’t exist then, martial arts schools were very rare, and competing schools often did not want to collaborate, what was more common was an adversarial relationship. It was common in those days for someone from a competing school to show up to a class and issue a challenge to fight to show which school was better. I answered a few of those challenges myself, though it seems insane now, I don’t recall ever being injured too badly. More often, Lou would just tell them to get out and they would slink away.

I loved everything about the training. I was good at poomsae and won a few tournaments early on. About my 3rd year Lou Wagner took it on himself to make me into a strong fighter, he was one of the toughest men I ever knew, was probably 50 pounds heavier and several inches taller than me, and he did not hold back. He beat me up regularly but then took the time to show me how he had done it and taught me how to counter him. He was relentless but for my own good, and sometime during this period I became aware that I had developed a reputation as the top fighter out of a five-school organization. Actually Lou himself told me this on a Saturday morning on the way to a tournament. That day I fought all the top guys in the tournament and won 1st place in sparring, captained the fight team that won 1st place, and won 1st place in forms. I owed all of that to my instructor, Lou Wagner, who saw something in me that he believed he could mold and develop. He invested the time and effort in me to make it happen.

That tournament was in May of 1975. So much time has passed but I frequently think back to how Lou pushed me to accomplish what he believed I could do. That was the foundation of my understanding of what can be accomplished in the life of a student, and I have always carried that with me, tried to develop ways to grow it, and continue to hope that some of my students will find as rich a reward through training as I have.

I have trained and taught many years since then and I know much I didn’t know then. I’ve learned valuable lessons and gained knowledge that in many ways, have taken me far beyond where I was in those early years. Still, the foundation that has allowed me to advance to 8th Dan and continue to teach for more than 50 years, was laid in the early 70’s by Lou Wagner.

Lou trained many others and if any of them are still around and active I’m not aware of it. I know that most of my students will find other paths, and that few will make it a lifelong pursuit as I have. Still, if I can lay the foundation he laid for me, they can decide in their own time if they want to build on it as I did, or to use that foundation to grow in another direction.