A month ago to the day, Grandmaster Henry Cook, my friend, mentor, business partner, and Sifu died. Last night Grandmaster Sonny King, my friend, mentor, and Sensei went to join him. I knew these men for only a few years, but they knew each other since early childhood. Louisville, Kentucky is not a large city, and it has always amazed me that there are so many giants of the Martial Arts here. How did this many come to be here, of all places? More extraordinary is that most of these men are black, which makes this an even smaller group to spawn so many masters. Sonny used to crack jokes about this odd phenomenon, he claimed that the nation of China with 1.5 billion people doesn’t have as many Grandmasters as Louisville’s black community. He joked to cover up his scepticism, actually, and then would frequently suggest that this is a bonafide case of grade inflation in the chop sockey arts. I have decided that these items are of great importance. I advance my theory about the great men here, in that small community, most of approximately the same age, with lives intertwined for decades like vines trying to grasp at something solid but only grasping each other in an attempt to seek the sun. In our fair city when these men were young, there wasn’t a lot of positivity around for a young black man. These men told me of marching for civil rights and human dignity, of race riots after the Death of Dr. King, of poverty, of crime, of agonizing pressure from all sides at all times. Surrounded by violence and death always, of fear and rage and pain, these men were like those vines, and with no fence to grow on they grew on each other, and in so doing raised a mound of themselves so they could all reach the sun. They became a foundation for one another, maybe without intending to, maybe without awareness of what was occurring. As they did this, they benefitted so many other vines, eventually creating a tower of strength that others could climb on. These men made life better for their beleaguered community and offered health, security, and dignity to all who grew near them. They were giants. They were men that you don’t often meet. Strength and integrity and honor are words that fly around in martial arts settings a lot, but it’s rare to find one person that really walks that walk, let alone two, especially in this mid-sized city. So inside of me is a big hole. A chasm that used to be filled with their light and strength and mass so big that it had it’s own gravity, and lesser men like me orbited them. And now we have a choice, because I’m surely not the only one that feels like I’ve spun out of orbit. We can lament, and think they were magical people, and that we will never replace them. We can fly through the dark void forever and never see this light again. We could also lament and think they were giant beanstalks, and we can seek to have that magic and that strength ourselves, and in so doing we can let lost vines grow on us and find the sun. We can honor their memory and protect their legacy and show ourselves that they are not forgotten, and that we are not lost. We can do what they did. We can become better from this. We can choose to be the new vine that grows in the dirt that they left behind, and let other vines grow on us, and we can make them proud. And maybe if we make them proud, the pain will go away. Henry wouldn’t give up. Sonny wouldn’t give up. They would stand up, brush off the dust, and get back to work. Train. Practice. Question. Improve. Teach. Help that other guy up off the floor. Build a stronger, brighter life for everyone still in the dark. Don’t let this new patch of bare dirt fill with weeds. Be a strong vine. Make a new tower. So now, lament. But after the lament is done and the dirges are over and our friends are buried, when they are looking down at us from Valhalla, let us make damn sure they smile at what they see.
Posted on: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 17:03:52 +0000
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