My Background

I was born in Michigan, about 150 miles north of Detroit, and grew up on a farm there. After high school, I joined the Air Force and served from 1959 to 1963. After completing my service I enrolled at Central Michigan University in 1964, then transferred to the University of Michigan in 1966. I was in a combined degree program and, by transferring some UofM credits back to CMU, I got a Bachelor’s degree in Physics (mathematics minor) from CMU and a Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering from UofM.

While working as an electronics technician in a research laboratory I had a co-worker who had just gotten a green belt in Taekwon-Do, and he invited me to come watch a class. That class was enough to hook me for life. My first instructor was B.C. “Jimmy” Yu, only a blue belt, but he was running a branch school in Ann Arbor, MI, for Sang Kyu Shim. I worked my way up to red belt there. Sang Kyu Shim was a student of Choi Hong Hi, the founder of Taekwon-Do. While still a white belt in 1966, I was introduced by Master Shim to General Choi. My path through Taekwon-Do intersected frequently with General Choi over the years.

After moving to Vermont in 1968 to work as an electronics engineer at Simmonds Precision in Vergennes, I continued studying whatever martial arts I was able to find. I spent some time learning Okinawan karate with Howard Flynn, and received a green belt through him. Later I found Master Bruce Twing who was teaching Korean styles in Barre, Vermont. Twing had earned his black belt in Korea while serving in the armed forces there. I got my black belt through Master Twing in the spring of 1972.

Simmonds, being a government contractor, had periods of frenetic activity followed by layoffs as old contracts ended and new ones ramped up. In order to keep busy, during one of those layoffs I decided to start my own school in 1972, which I named Vermont Academy of Karate II, in Williston, Vermont.

I earned my 2nd and 3rd degree black belts with Master Myung Kil Kim from South Bend, Indiana, who was a vice-president of the American Taekwon-Do Association (ATA). When he passed away in 1976, I called Grandmaster Suh Chong Kang, who was the president of the association, and asked him to recommend an instructor. Without hesitation he suggested I talk to Suk Jun Kim, who was a student of General Choi’s, and was then teaching in Bergenfield, NJ. I traveled to New Jersey to meet with him and have been his student ever since. I earned my 4th Dan with him in 1979 and also my 5th, both through the International Taekwon-Do Federation (ITF).

General Choi would frequently visit S.J. Kim’s school, either for a tournament or for promotions, and I and several other of Kim’s higher ranked students were able to talk with him about the patterns and learn first-hand the why’s and how’s of performing them.

In 1983, we received a request from Sabree Salleh, a photographer and martial artist who was a student of General Choi’s, to participate in a photo shoot commissioned by General Choi and taken at the General’s house. The photos were to illustrate the stances and movements that made up the collection of patterns that defined Taekwon-Do. Those photos were eventually published, with accompanying text, as the Encyclopedia of Taekwon-Do.

As the years progressed, I received my 6th, 7th, and 8th Dan through the All-American Taekwon-Do Federation (AATF).

I have had Taekwon-Do schools all through northern Vermont for the past 40 years, and am now happily running a thriving school in South Burlington, Vermont, Donnelly’s Martial Arts Center.