In 1976 I joined the Pennsylvania State Police and turned the operation of the dojo over to my senior student, Robert Trotta. Over the course of my twenty-six year career in the State Police I was a traffic cop; served as a personal bodyguard to Governor Milton Shap; worked as a fugitive retrieval officer tasked with finding and returning escaped murders to the state penitentiary; worked with US Navy SEALs and Israeli Mossad agents in a pilot PSP Hostage Situation / Stress Shooting course; was a developer and instructor in the Imagin PA program and a myriad of other assignments.
As concerning the development of my martial arts knowledge, the job gave me something that 90% of all martial arts instructors are sorely lacking: exposure to “real world” situations. I’ve been in scraps and struggles and tussles and outright fights. I learned that I can knock a man unconscious with a punch delivered two inches from his jaw. I also learned that wrist and elbow locks are useless against a 115 pound hysterical woman who doesn’t care if you break her arm. I know what it’s like to fight with a criminal whose trying to get hold of your gun at 11:00 o’clock at night, at shift change, in one of three lanes of traffic on a freeway with tractor trailers wizzing by at 60 miles per hour – hint here fellows – absolutely NO GROUND FIGHTING!
In 1997 I spotted a new martial arts school near my home. Their sign indicated that they taught Tae Kwon - Do and Hapkido among other things. Since I had been meaning to check out Hapkido since the Billy Jack movies, I pulled into the parking lot and went inside. I was greeted by Grandmaster Nam Paek who immediately said, “I know you, but I don’t know from where.” This I found most interesting, because, I did not know him.
I mentioned that I was interested in Hapkido and that I had studied Tae Kwon - Do with Grandmaster Kwak. (Yes, I know I’m calling them “Grandmaster” and not “Mr.”. Sometime in the 1980's some marketing person figured out that Americans would rather be trained by ‘Masters” than “Misters”.) He replied, “That’s how I know you. I was on your black belt testing board at Bob Dunn’s school, 1973”. How he remembered that was beyond me, but we immediately became friends. I went home, got my gi and came back for a free Hapkido lesson.
All in all, Hapkido seemed to me to be Aikido with spinning kicks and that was something that I really didn’t want to spend time doing, so, I opted to join his Tae Kwon - Do class. A little over a year later Grandmaster Paek and I compiled a syllabus of HapKIdo, AiKIdo and Ju Jutsu techniques to be offered as a supplemental course of study at Paek’s Martial Arts Academy. We named the courseKI Ju Jutsu. (You’re good! Caught the new spelling. – By this time, all things “jiu jitsu” had become the province of grappling.).
