Tracy's Kenpo Karate Shreveport, LA

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The history of American Kenpo (not kenpo) begins with Ed Parker and his conflicting relationship with Professor Chow; and it was this relationship between Chow and Parker that led many, including myself, to realize that both men had departed far from the First Principle of Kenpo. Chow was hurt when the Emperado brothers and his other students left him, and he was hurt even more because one of his students, not just an Island boy, but a brother Mormon, Ed Parker, had made it good on the mainland and was getting wealthy while he was poor, unknown, and forgotten. And it is this Mormon connection that would become the foundation for the development of American Kenpo. Ed Parker held people in different levels of respect and trust, and if the reader doesn't understand this, he or she will never understand Ed Parker. The lowest level of Ed's trust were people he knew, business associates etc. Next were his Kenpo students, above them were his Kenpo elder brothers. Above these were Mormons. I don't care what any of his students may say, if one wasn't a Mormon, Ed really didn't trust him, and he was not allowed into Ed's true inner circle, with one very important exception. If you were Kenpo and Hawaiian, you were held to the same respect as a Kenpo-Mormon. If you were Mormon-Kenpo-Hawaiian, you were family. Those who would claim they were part of Ed's inner circle found just how in they were (not) when Ed died leaving them on the outside. This Parker hierarchy was quite apparent to my brothers and me. Ed had shared rice with us when he did not have rice to share. We are the ones to whom Ed came when he was turned down for buying a house because the seller didn't want his house to go to "his kind." We were Mormons. I was made Shodan by Professor Chow at a turbulent time when Ed needed Professor Chow's approval. My brothers were among Ed's highest ranking black belts. I know of few others with whom Ed felt comfortable enough to go to their houses on a regular basis. But we were not Hawaiian. About 1984, I turned Ed down when he asked me to help him with the control of his organization. When he asked me why, I told him, "Because I'm not Hawaiian." He understood perfectly. We both knew that only a Kenpo-Mormon-Hawaiian would ever take his place. Not only that, but Ed knew how much I opposed his Mormonization of the IKKA, and American Kenpo when I refused to be a part of it. This included the way Ed changed the wearing of the belt to comport to Mormon temple ritual, as well as the way he would draw his hand across his body and other practices which were similar to temple rituals. He also knew how I had fought to get unanimous agreement among the Yuudansha to oppose his plan using the "Mormon method" for stripping a Yuudansha of his belt and rank. Mormons have a peculiar attitude towards authority and knowledge. And this attitude is reflected in American kenpo. Within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, (Mormons) all authority rests with the First Presidency, i.e. the President and his two counselors. The President is considered to be a Prophet, Seer and revelator through whose authority the "priesthood" is extended to all worthy male members of the church. Under the First Presidency there is a hierarchy of Apostles, Seventies, Regional Representatives, Stake Presidents, High Priests, Bishops and Elders. Ed Parker would pattern American Kenpo after the priesthood organization of the Mormon Church. When a person is excommunicated from the Mormon Church his priesthood and any authority is taken from him. But this removing of authority encompasses much more than just excommunication. Many Mormons believe that all the knowledge one gained under the priesthood is also taken away; a concept that has it roots in Mormon history. When the early leaders of the Mormon Church rebelled and split into factions, Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon faith, quickly excommunicated them. Not only were they cut off from the Church, but their "priesthood authority" and presumably the "knowledge" that went with that authority was also taken from them. This concept that excommunication revoked the priesthood authority as well as knowledge, was exacerbated when Brigham Young became the President of the Mormon Church. Over the next 100 years, the loss of knowledge with excommunication became so well accepted that modern Mormon leaders teach, and many Mormons believe, that a person only has knowledge pertaining to an office or position in the Church as long as he hold that office or position; and as soon as one is released from his office or position his knowledge is taken from him. Thus, according to Mormon belief, one doesn't have to be excommunicated for knowledge to be taken, it is taken when he leaves his office. The final steps in the formation of American Kenpo would find Ed Parker alluding to himself as the "High Priest and Prophet" of kenpo, (his own words, not mine) and incorporating Mormon Temple signs, tokens and oaths into the forms and rank. The concept was for Ed Parker to be the First President of American Kenpo, in whom all authority was vested. All black belts would hold their belts at his will and have their knowledge only as long as Ed Parker permitted. When a black belt left the American Kenpo organization, he would be stripped of his belt; he would no longer have authority, or the knowledge to teach American Kenpo. This concept was probably always in Ed's subconscious, but began to show itself openly in 1964, and in the transition that would lead to what would become American Kenpo, black belt rank would expire on a certain date. This was based on the Mormon tradition of having officers serve for a limited period. This concept would eventually have everyone in American Kenpo fighting to stay alive in the Kenpo. All rank in the IKKA was lost when they left the IKKA. To justify their rank, many of these former IKKA black belts have created their own associations to give themselves rank. While Professor Chow had a strong belief in the Mormon faith, he was what might be called a Jack Mormon. He drank and had other "Mormon faults." But he had no illusions about knowledge being lost when a student left him. No one could take his knowledge from him. The only way to keep his students from leaving him was not to give them black belts, and that is exactly what he did for a period after the Emperado brothers left. It was during this period that Ed attained the knowledge for Shodan. But Professor Chow was promoting no one to Shodan, and without a black belt, no one would leave him. When Ed Parker, and some of Chow's other students, went to the mainland and claimed to be black belts, Chow changed his system. If his new students didn't have knowledge, they couldn't teach. Sonny Emperado, however, and his group were still practicing their art on the street, and it worked. So Chow went back to teaching his original kenpo which had always worked for him on the street. Nor did Professor Chow have any doubt that if he were to give Ed Parker the rank he wanted, Ed Parker would eventually claim to be the Master of Kenpo. And despite the animosity that arose between Ed and Professor Chow, when Ed claimed San Dan in 1956, Chow only complained to his closest associates. This gave Ed a de facto rank that Chow eventually accepted. There is one other Mormon connection which would develop 20 years after the fact. If Ed Parker had any intention of founding a Kenpo empire when he went to the Mainland in 1949, (as he would later claim) he kept it a well guarded secret. He had less than half a year of training under Professor Chow, at that time and Chow denied that Ed had ever talked to him about teaching at BYU or opening a Kenpo Karate school, let alone taking Kenpo to the continental United States. And there is good evidence that Chow was telling the truth. No one was making a living teaching Kenpo. Chow got by making $40-50 teaching classes at the YMCA. But the Emperado brothers, who had taken several of Chow's YMCA classes when they left him, were being run ragged going from one class to another. The simple fact is, Parker went to BYU to get a degree so he could go into law enforcement. It was not so he could become a martial arts instructor, as he would later claim. Again, Ed was at BYU from September 1949 until August 1951, at which time he entered the Coast Guard. He was in Coast Guard training until March or April 1952, after which he got stationed in Hawaii. Over the next two and a half years, Ed would spend over one year at sea. But there are other facts that militate against Ed intending to make a living at Kenpo. Ed never taught anyone but his fellow Hawaiians at BYU before he went into the Coast Guard in 1952. In his book, Inside Elvis published in 1978, Ed was honest about his early years. In that book, he had no martial arts agenda. On page 24 he states that his classes were closed to "haoles" (whites). There were so few Islanders on the mainland that no one in his right mind would ever think he could make a living teaching them Kenpo. When Ed did start teaching non Hawaiians, they were mostly law enforcement personnel, or law enforcement students. One of Ed's early BYU students was a BYU fencing instructor by the name of Mills Crenshaw, who would become the driving forces in the Parker Kenpo system in Utah and the IKKA. Ahead of Miles in rank was Charles Beeder who was Ed's assistant instructor, and of course, a law enforcement officer (a game warden). But there was never any though of making money from teaching kenpo, other than the small amount he made teaching at a Provo health club. After all, he didn't begin teaching non Hawaiians until the year he graduated BYU. Ed made little or nothing from teaching Kenpo at BYU, and he often stated that Charles Beeder had fed him when he didn't have food, and money from home was days away. Ed did make a small amount of money however teaching at a Prove health club. On page 25, of Inside Elvis, Ed states what he had always said when I was teaching for him, "Graduation was decision time...should I further my education or seek employment?" Those were his only two options. Teaching kenpo, and establishing a kenpo empire was never an option at that time. In his own words, Ed Parker states that it was a chain of circumstances that led him to open his first studio. Ed Parker wrote Chow after he went to Pasadena in 1956, requesting permission to open a school. This was the first Chow heard about it, and asked Sonny Emperado what he should do. Sonny recalls the letter and writes about it, because he told Chow he should give his permission. (Chow also showed me the letter in 1959, and it was clear this was something Ed had just come upon. Had Ed planned a chain of Kenpo schools from the beginning, his students in Utah would have been the first to support him. However, it was not until after Ed Parker had made a success of his Pasadena studio that Mills Crenshaw opened his own school in Salt Lake City. That was around 1962. Ed of course would claim that he had been given Chow's blessing to open kenpo schools on the mainland. Chow tells it a very different way. Again the Mormon connection comes into play with this. Chow and Parker were both Mormons. Within the Mormon faith there is a priesthood office called, Patriarch, whose duties include giving blessings to all faithful members of the Church in his area who wish them. Ed Parker's father was a Patriarch in Hawaii. However, every Elder in the Mormon Church has the authority to give blessings, as does every father, whether he is an Elder or not. Chow had many of his Mormon students come to him to ask for a blessing before they went into the service or to the mainland. This was a religious blessing, something Mormons do all the time. For instance, after a person is baptized into the Mormon Church, he or she is confirmed a member of the church and is often given a blessing with the confirmation. Likewise, whenever a person receives an office or position in the Mormon Church, he or she is usually given a blessing. Blessing in the Mormon Church are not as common as handshakes, but they are certainly far more common that hugs or kisses. This was the blessing Chow said he gave Ed Parker when he went back to BYU in 1954. It was not a blessing to teach kenpo, because Chow told me he never knew Ed was teaching Kenpo on the mainland, until he asked for permission to open his first school. After receiving his Bachelor's degree in 1956, Ed moved to Los Angeles where he intended to work with youth in law enforcement. When my brothers and I began training with Ed, a year later, he was still bitter over his law enforcement experience. While it is true that Ed opened his first school after a health club where he was teaching went out of business, there is more to the story than that. Ed first got a job in law enforcement and immediately requested to work with youth. His supervisors had other plans. Ed was large, looked tough and had an appearance that commanded respect. His martial arts expertise made him perfect for working with the toughest, hardened criminals. When Ed was finally told that he would never be working with youth, he quit. Ed had been teaching kenpo at a health club (owned by a Mormon) to augment his income, and it was only after he quit his job that he began thinking of kenpo karate as a way to make a living. After all, Ed had only trained for two things, law enforcement and Kenpo. Ed was bitter over his law enforcement experience for years. Then he didn't speak of it any more, and after a while, Ed would tell people he had planned on taking kenpo to the entire country from the beginning. I was not only there when Ed tried to take kenpo the rest of the country. I was the one he sent to the different school to get them to come with him. When it became obvious that other styles would not come over to kenpo, Ed changed his direction and started his International Tournament in Long Beach. But that was 8 years after he opened his first studio.

part 3

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