This story begins in July of 1977 when I moved to Orlando, FL and joined the YMCA. I knew nothing about karate, or diiferent styles, other than I would learn to fight. It turned out that the style taught in this class was Tae Kwon Do, a Korean variant of Shotokan Karate.
What was taught was not a pure form of Tae Kwon Do although it was clearly an effective fighting style. We practiced the Palgwe forms at kup (Japanese kyu) grades and the Japanese forms of Bassai Dai, Chinto, Rohai and Jion beginning at Dan grades. There were more, but these were the required kata for testing.

I first met the assistant instructor, DeWitt Jones. Mr. Jones was a Shodan under Mr. Kelley, the chief instructor. I trained with Mr. Jones for a few months before actually meeting Mr. Kelley and for most of the first couple of years Mr. Jones was my primary teacher. Mr. Jones was an excellent tournament fighter and was starting to become a fierce and accomplished full-contact fighter at th this time.

We trained in a classroom at the John Calvin Church on Oak Ridge Rd, next to what is now the YMCA building. The YMCA had only an office and pool when I started. The floor was hard tile that got slippery when wet with sweat. And there was a lot of sweat! There was no air conditioner either.

My first memory of Karate class is knuckle pushups on that hard floor. It was the first thing we did that night and there were thousands more to come in the future - not only as general exercise but puhishment for talking and goofing off in class.

Our training was hard and harsh, but fun and I had made good friends. It was also good to know we were one of the toughest schools in the county. NEXT >