lee Archives - The Superior Martial Artist

Grandmaster Eui Lee, the head instructor at the World Taekwondo Academy of Maple Grove and U.S.A. National Team Coach, was recently named U.S.A. Taekwondo 2011 Coach of the Year.

Coach Lee and his club have produced more National Champions and National Team members in the State of Minnesota then all the Minnesota clubs combined, according to a press release.

As part of a local elementary school’s physical education program, Coach Lee started a taekwondo program last year. “The goal of the program is to allow students who might not be able to afford a taekwondo lesson the ability to participate in martial arts,” according to the U.S.A. Taekwondo website.

This honor is also shared with his father who passed away two years ago and was also acknowledged for an award. Grandmaster Byung Yul Lee was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award throughU.S.A. Taekwondo.

Coach Lee was thrilled with his honor, according to the press release from World Taekwondo Academy, but what made everything even more special is that he was acknowledged with his father.

“His efforts helped taekwondo become one of the largest sports and martial arts in the world,” U.S.A. Taekwondo website.

Grandmaster Byung Yul Lee is one of the original Masters to come America in 1968 to help spread the art and sport of Taekwondo. The World Taekwondo Academy was established in 1969 by Grandmaster Byung Yul Lee.

San Francisco Bay Area martial arts legend Al Novak, who influenced movie icon Bruce Lee, died Saturday in a Fremont hospital after he was hit last week by a car while sitting in his wheelchair, friends said.

Novak, a Great Grandmaster and last surviving 10th degree black belt in the kajukenbo self-defence style, was in his late 80s. The Fremont resident broke down racial barriers once inherent in the sport, growing up training in San Francisco’s Chinatown, unheard of for a Caucasian in the 1920s and ’30s.

“He was beloved by everybody,” said Greg Lee, whose father, James Lee, was a business partner of Novak’s and Bruce Lee, Hollywood’s first martial arts star who died tragically in 1973. “When you’re a grandmaster, it means you’ve incorporated your own manoeuvres and changed other things around and developed an art, and that’s what Al did.”

Novak’s martial arts career spanned more than 50 years, according to a profile on usadojo.com. He became so accomplished that Bruce Lee would not spar with him publicly, according to the website.

Novak was confined to a wheelchair in 2005 after the van in which he was riding in as a passenger crashed. Both his femurs were crushed.

Even though he could not walk, he still split blocks of wood at the martial arts school he ran in Fremont and commanded enough respect that black belt recipients in their respective arts often wanted Novak to sign their certificates, said friend Jeff Finder.

Novak served on a PT boat during the Second World War, training alongside future U.S. president John F. Kennedy.

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Maple Grove Taekwondo Coach, Father Honored

Martial arts legend Al Novak passes away