Sho Dan Year One

 

 

You anticipate what getting your Sho Dan will be like.

You’ve gone through the door and have experienced year one.

You are the guide to those who are walking the walk themselves.

 

All of us might consider exploring Sho Dan year one as a topic.

 

For me it seems just a few days ago I underwent my own examination at Mr. Lewis dojo. I remember sleeping that night at Charlie Murray’s home in Delaware with my new black belt under my pillow.

 

Then it becomes kaleidoscopic.

 

Charlie beginning my study of ShiShi No Kon No Dai.

 

My first tournament as a black belt, a Coal Kick In in Penna and facing Sam Shockley, ranked 10^th in the PKA as my first fight.

 

Charlie taking me out for coffee and explaining to me that he had decided to return to the Air Force and giving up his church.

 

His last day in the Scranton area, packing up his house. Me standing outside in thunderstorms trying to get the rest of Shi Shi No Kon, lighting and pouring rain as I stood on the lawn working on the kata. When the rain stopped, Charlie would come outside show me some more before the rain began again and he’d go back inside to pack more.

 

The loss when we said goodbye and not realizing that was the last formal Isshinryu instruction I would receive for my lifetime.  [I should add here the sharing I received from Harrill Sensei is really in a different lifetime to my way of thinking, but then I wasn’t his student and fortunate that he was there when I was ready for his instruction.]

 

Being alone with a handful of kids, no place to teach as the church asked me to leave as I wasn’t a member when Charlie left, taking the kids to McDade Park for the summer trying to figure out what to do.

 

Competing at a tournament in Harrisburg and taking 3^rd place in Kobudo for Tokomeni. Meeting other Isshinryu seniors who’s only comment was to scorn my instructor way of doing Isshinryu and being too new and alone, to know how to respond except remain polite.  Later learning they hadn’t trained in Okinwawa and much later understanding the deeper issues involved, how Isshinryu really didn’t like other Isshinryu, or at least as I found it in Penna. And New Jersey in those days.

 

 

Convincing the Boys Club of Scranton to let me begin a free karate program, and then trying to run it the way Charlie had taught me the past year, at an advanced brown belt class to help drive almost all the kids from the first group away.

 

My wife’s intelligent explanations how to teach youth and starting over with a new group.

 

Attending tournaments and competing with some of the best open tournament karate and kobudo competitors in the United States, and discovering that having arrived I was fully at the bottom.  Having nobody to assist my Isshinryu studies, really no books, no movies and before later video tapes, I chose to use Shi Shi No Kon and Chantan Yara as my competition kata, so I wouldn’t forget them.

 

Having the privilege to attend a local Tang Soo Do tournament and by standing up for truth, justice and the American Way earned great displeasure from the local TSD seniors and even their Korean Masters. What a fortunate day that was.  Heck my wife re-entered training just to knock some of them around, which she did and of course got disqualified to her pleasure.

 

Finding that Black Belt published the letter I had written 8 months earlier to the publisher of Rainbow Publications  regarding the excessive coverage of Tang Soo Do Moo Duk Kwan in their magazines. Finding out that there was great enmity towards my existence and not giving a damn about them anyway, though its publication and the following issues denunciation of my existence did make many friends across Penna. On the open tournament circuit.

 

And of course finding out that nobody except me cared about what I did in karate.  The other places I was welcome to train could care less about what I studied, just that I was a welcome body to sweat with them. The rest of the world could care less about karate too.

 

Early mornings and late evenings on the sidewalk in front of my house running kata.

 

Driving to Salisbury, Md. to train with the club, having Sensei say Hi and then getting in the car and driving 8 hours back home.

 

And through it all there was just me, and the knowledge that I wasn’t good enough to be a black belt and had to work to get there someday.

 

Thinking back on it I have a hard time thinking I could have experienced more, and the only one who knew I experienced all of this was me anyway.

 

Think of it, fighting people far about my head, irritating a large local martial arts group (because they were afraid of me…o’my goodness and I always a pleasant fellow), stepping on the floor with great competitors, finding out how to teach, a little when I was totally unprepared for it and would go through many hard lessons as a result,  starting to train anywhere I could find (good and bad) to try and push myself, and of course the reality, nobody really gave a damn except me.

 

So for one part that was my Sho Dan year one.

You all have your dreams what you’ll find.

Some of you have been there.

Some of us have to guide the new Sho Dan today.