Author: TSMA Page 175 of 200

JU JITSU fighter John Black has become the first Scot in the martial arts hall of fame – at the age of 70.

The grandad-of-three was also named international ju jitsu coach of the year and international supreme grandmaster of the year by the USA Martial Arts Hall of Fame, who oversee the sport internationally.

He was presented with the honours at a ceremony in Newark, New Jersey.

John, from Greenock, said: “It’s absolutely brilliant. I’m so pleased that I have left my mark on the sport after so many years.

“I’m never going to be an old man happy in an armchair, wearing my slippers. Ju jitsu is a part of who I am and as long as I’m upright on my two legs I’ll be doing it.”

John, a retired diver, began practicing martial arts aged nine under the tuition of his dad Conn, who learned them in a Singapore prison camp in World War II.

At 18, after two years in the Merchant Navy, he moved to Japan for two years to develop his skills.

He earned his black belt 10th Dan, the highest grade in the world, earlier this year.

And he won two gold medals at the Freedom Games in Cancun, Mexico, last year.

Sergeant Major Timothy Drysdale struggled to share his story of Iraq.

He was shot at close range multiple times. The artery in his right leg was severed, his femur bone was shattered and he suffered shrapnel wounds to his left leg and lower body. Paramedics dragged him on a plastic litter over a mile under heavy gunfire to a helicopter. Drysdale went unconscious from blood loss. When paramedics couldn’t find a pulse, he was resuscitated multiple times during his transport to the field hospital.

He was finally transferred to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center for 9 weeks. A volunteer from the Wounded Warrior Project (WWP) visited him every single day he was there.

Today, Drysdale has a prosthetic leg. However, you would never know it when he is practicing ju jitsu. Drysdale believes that his martial arts training with local sensei Bill Oliver is a vital part of his rehabilitation.

Oliver is particularly sensitive to the needs of veterans since he was a member of the U.S. Army Special Forces and former Ranger. He has practiced multiple forms of martial arts including karate, wing chun, judo and taekwondo but prefers aiki ju jitsu because of its practical application to real life situations.

Oliver spearheaded the first Naples ju jitsu fundraiser for the WWP with a martial arts seminar at his dojo. The fundraiser was open to the public and ju jitsu masters from all over the United States came to demonstrate at the weekend seminar. The fundraiser held special meaning to the masters as they have each had personal experience with the WWP. All of the masters are members of the Special Forces unit in the military and have used martial arts in combat.

The WWP began when wounded service members returned from Afghanistan and Iraq. Severely injured service members faced overwhelming obstacles in the civilian world. Family and other veterans formed the WWP to provide the assistance that the wounded service members desperately needed. The program provides comprehensive assistance from the moment of injury to total rehabilitation and re-entry to civilian life. For many of the wounded service members, martial arts training has become the most effective form of therapy in their recovery.

It’s not often that you see adults brutally punch each other and then immediately hug, however, the ju jitsu weekend seminar was filled with injuries followed by a warm embrace.

“Aiki ju jitsu is effective because the difference in size between opponents is irrelevant. That’s why it’s good even for women as a method of self-defense. Anyone can be trained to disable an assailant,” Oliver said.

The seminar was a mysterious mix of group therapy and aggressive real life self-defense training. Oliver communicates the mission of the WWP: “To honor and empower wounded warriors” through his methodology of instruction. He helps his students to regain confidence by building physical strength. He encourages mental control by requiring discipline and the students have an opportunity to release their anger using forceful combat moves.

“From day one you get hugged. Sensei Oliver is a big guy and his heart is twice as big,” Drysdale said.

The ju jitsu fundraising seminar was filled to capacity with the audience spilling out of the dojo onto the sidewalk and street. The ju jitsu masters, audience and students all donated to the WWP. However, the real gift to the WWP was not the donation, it was the help Oliver provided to those in need.

The WWP is currently headquartered in Jacksonville, Fla. Additional information can be found at www.woundedwarriorproject.org. For more information or to participate in future fundraising seminars at the dojo, log onto www.naplesaikijujitsu.com

A JUJITSU fighting suffragette who learnt the martial art in the heart of the West End is to be immortalised with a plaque.

Edith Garrud was a real-life female action hero. While in her 20s in the early 1900s, she and her husband Evan Jones met Japanese jujitsu instructor Sadakazu Uyenishi in Golden Square, Soho.

Ms Garrud became one of the world’s first female martial arts instructors.

Her first dojo, or training centre, was a rented room in the new Palladium Academy, a school for dancers in nearby Argyll Street.

She also trained in Golden Square. She would pass on her fighting skills to other suffragettes, who would fend off the cops during protests for women’s rights, according to her great-nephew, Martin Williams.

He said: “The whole strategy of the suffragettes was that they would create a group around the main leaders like Emmeline Pank­hurst, and when the police tried to get close they’d fend them off using the Jujitsu Edith taught them.”

A 1910 issue of Punch magazine portrays a cartoon image of Edith single-handedly tackling six policemen.

Mr Williams said it had worked well for his great aunt to have her training ground in Soho.

“She was very pleased to have it in the posh end of town,” he said, “because people were less likely to suspect. The suffragettes would create a disturbance in Oxford Street, but then they’d run back to the dojo and hide their clubs and bats under the floor. By the time the police arrived they’d be pretending they were in the middle of their exercise class.”

Edith Garrud died in 1971, aged 99. A plaque is set to be unveiled on the street where she lived in Islington later this year.

Marc Unger isn’t shy about mixing his religious beliefs with his three-decade-long love of martial arts.

Every lesson in the Baptist minister’s Exeter karate studio starts and ends with a prayer.

“First and foremost I teach karate — but what my students begin to realize is that it’s about much more than that,” Unger said. “I talk to them about drugs, alcohol and abstinence. It may not be politically correct. But, then, I’ve never been very politically correct.”

He’s also never been one to follow the crowd.

The New York-born Unger was raised in a Russian, secular Jewish household and had music on his mind when he graduated from high school.

“I didn’t see college in my profile,” he said.

Instead, there was the job as a lifeguard at Coney Island and paying gigs as a drummer with local blues and jazz bands.

The karate classes started about 10 years out of high school, an outgrowth of his tough upbringing near the projects in the Bronx. He wasn’t much of a fighter in his youth but the physicality of the sport attracted him.

“There were definitely times when I would’ve wanted to use it,” he said.

It didn’t start out well. After a few rough years and a lot of lost sparring matches, Unger was frustrated. He wasn’t getting the attention he needed to progress and the instructors never seemed to have the right answers.

Then one day in 1978, the referee in his latest, losing bout had some advice for him — although it was a little tough to take.

“He told me ‘Man, you too nice’ and then he told me I didn’t know how to move,” he said.

Unger quickly realized that the referee, 10th-degree black belt Sam Price, was the instructor he should’ve been working with all of this time.

He dropped everything and started working with Price studying the Go Ju Ryu system of karate at Price’s Kansas studio. Over the years he started working as a business manager for the karate master and then moved on to teaching. He became the 10th person in 22 years to earn his black belt from Price.

Then, in 1982, Unger found himself at a crossroads, despondent over his life — and his relationships with women — with nowhere to turn.

“I realized that there were things that I’d done wrong and I found myself praying,” he said. “Then I just picked up my feet and started moving one step at a time.”

The journey would take him to Dallas Bible College and a new career in the ministry. Six years later, now a married father, he would make his way out to the Central
Valley.

It took several years for him to find the right church, and the right congregation, for his message. He worked at skilled jobs to make ends meet.

“I drove a cement mixer — I took whatever came my way,” he said.

Eventually he found his niche, starting a small Southern Baptist church in Exeter.

He also started his own studio in town in 1990, teaching the Go Ju Ryu system.

Since then the studio has become a staple in the small South Valley town, with a case full of trophies won by Unger’s students and his children, some of whom went on to become accomplished martial artists in their own right.

The ministry and the karate studio have always gone hand-in-hand.

“When we do our karate our faith comes through,” he said.

The family also turned to their faith in a time of tragedy. In 2004, Unger’s 19-year-old son Daniel, a karate instructor and a licensed minister himself, was killed in a mortar attack while serving with the National Guard in Iraq. He was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star and his story became the subject of the film “A Hero’s Love” by Family First Films. Unger dusted off his music production skills and wrote and produced a companion CD “I’ll be waiting for you in heaven” dedicated to his son.

Unger also turned his boundless energies into the military chaplaincy, and works as a Captain in the California State Military Reserve helping 1,200-1,400 ex GIs make the transition stateside to this day.

“They recruited me to be the chaplain for Daniel’s battalion,” he said. “It was quite an honor.”

Today, Unger is on the move again. When the congregation got too small to keep the doors of his Exeter church open, he started applying for other ministry jobs around the Valley. He was offered a job two hours to the north in Oakhurst — but he has no plans to give up his work at the karate studio.

His son David, a fifth-degree black belt and a master instructor, will help him make the transition. Unger is quick to point out the 25-year-old David has been in karate for 20 years.

The prayers at the beginning and end of each lesson will also stay.

“It’s a mirror of our faith,” he said. “We are still, very definitely, a Christian organization.”