Photo 2014: Honor, Truth, Integrity, Tradition...Supreme Grandmaster Nam Suk Lee's last and highest ranking students pose for a group shot in Grandmaster Jon Wiedenman's home studio in San Pedro, California, USA. From Left to right in order of rank, Grandmaster Jon Wiedenman, 9th Dan; Master Tony Barnes, 8th Dan; Master George Fullerton, 8th Dan; and, Master David Johns, 6th Dan.
Band of Brothers: I was sorting through some photos and found this recent picture. I was lucky enough to get a photo with the three senior Chang Moo Kwan Instructors under Supreme Grandmaster Nam Suk Lee in the same place at the same time.
This photo is taken in my home dojo with Supreme Grandmaster Nam Suk Lee photo behind us. The four of us all trained extensively with our late teacher immediately before his passing, and to this day, continue his teachings and his wisdom with integrity, truthfulness, and honor.
I am proud to stand along with Master Barnes, Fullerton, and Johns. They are also my best friends. We have passed though the happiness and hardships of life together...almost forty years; the common bond was Chang Moo Kwan where we all met. We raised our families together, and we supported each other in so many ways--thick and thin.
The other day someone asked me who and what we were. I thought about it. I guess I had never really thought about it that much.
I answered: The last students of the late founder of Chang Moo Kwan.
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Photo: 1999 Supreme Grandmaster Nam Suk Lee and Grandmaster Jon Wiedenman and his son Ian Wiedenman at the San Pedro YMCA Studio after a private lesson together.
This is my favorite photo of Supreme Grandmaster Nam Suk Lee.
It is this one. It was after one of my private lessons with Supreme Grandmaster Lee, and I had my son for that day. I decided to bring him to the class. Ian, then about four, was all over the place.
I would do a form, and in the middle Ian would run up and want to wrestle with me. Supreme Grandmaster Lee was really good about it. He just smiled and kept teaching. I love these photos because Supreme Grandmaster affectionately put his arm around Ian, like telling me he was ok with me being a dad with a "wild" four year old son.
I was happy with the ground Supreme Grandmaster Nam Suk Lee covered in our San Pedro YMCA. The many times I had met him here and in Korea, he had a very serious side. Maybe guarded…That was no longer apparent. I think this was a turning point.
I knew at this point our training was as much about compassion and mutual benefit mentally, physically, spiritually and emotionally. We had taken it to the next level.
Supreme Grandmaster Lee always was happy to see Ian when he came along with me. He knew I was a struggling single parent, and he build a bridge between the three of us with his compassion. This symbolized he was “Cultivating Capability” in his actions with creativity, flexibility and awareness to me, and Ian. Ian still remembers some of those moments.
When I see this photo with Supreme Grandmaster Lee’s arm around my son, I feel it is around me too. In addition I perceive around our YMCA youth program and his adult students in San Pedro. We had both changed definitively though this and many other moments like this.
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Photo: 1999 San Pedro YMCA: The return of Supreme Grandmaster Nam Suk Lee teaching after a forty year hiatus is captured in this photo with Grandmaster Jon Wiedenman on his left and Master George Fullerton.
This was an incredible day: historic by any standard and measures in martial arts. This photo was taken outside our dojo at the San Pedro, California YMCA after the first class taught by Chang Moo Kwan founder, and our newly adopted headmaster, Supreme Grandmaster Nam Suk Lee. George Fullerton on the left and Supreme Grandmaster Nam Suk Lee in the middle, and I am on the right.
Our journey with Supreme Grandmaster Lee officially started a few hours before this photo. It is our ground zero, and this is what it looked like. Neither George Fullerton nor I slept much the night before, and we sure did not sleep that night. Supreme Grandmaster Lee had told Master Fullerton and me it had been thirty of so years since he had taught any students; however, his first class was awesome. Mentally, spiritually, and physically he never lost his ability to cultivate capability. I have never seen anybody teach, guide, and motivate as much, with his presence and non-verbal articulations.
I remember reflecting on how Supreme Grandmaster Lee inquired directly I was truly willing to start over, after 25 years in Chang Moo Kwan. It was at a Mac Donald’s in Torrance, California, and my Korean dry cleaner and good friend was translating for George and me. I took my full cup of coffee and poured in on the shiny linoleum McDonald’s floor. Then I set the empty cup in front of him with an audible “click.” Supreme Grandmaster Nam Suk Lee had known me since 1979. His eyes widened, an ever slightly perceptible smile formed, and he said a warm and curt “OK.” Neither of us ever looked back. That is what I feel when I see this photo again. I playfully told Master George Fullerton, we are two pieces of tinder between a very significant spark.
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Photo 2014: A very special "Band of Brothers Master Anthony Barnes and Grandmaster Jon Wiedenman take a photo holding a photo, patch and flag honoring all veterans, but in particular, this day, the Airborne Divisions of the 82nd for Master Barnes and the 503 Airborne Parachute Division.
Master Tony Barnes spent a week with me in January and we paid tribute to our brave veterans past and present.
Master Tony Barnes first met my father at my mom's funeral in 2000. Tony and I had been friends for many years, but somehow dad and he never met. Tony has always been a great listener. He remembered dad served in the 503 Airborne Paratrooper Division and Tony struck up a conversation with dad. Instantly, they were brothers, and you could not have hammered a wedge between them that day. I never knew everything they talked about, but I think these pictures tell some of it. They had a spiritual bridge spanning any differences in age, race, and background. Tony was the son of a school teacher from Mississippi; dad was the son a corn farmer in Iroquois South Dakota. Tony served during the Vietnam War; Dad was destined for the World War II battlefields of North Africa. Both jumped out of airplanes.
I looked at the first two pictures of Tony and Dad. I visually exchanged uniforms. Then I thought for a while about the two men who filled the uniforms and who they were and what they stood for. I thought about their willingness to jump into danger for our freedom. I thought about the level which they both could communicate and bond one which I could never truly understand completely. I was humbled.
One of the biggest honors of my life was when Master Barnes asked if we could take a photo holding dads photo. We were going to do our forms together so we went to my home dojo and Tony put on his 82nd Airborne had and held dad picture. After training and at dinner we spent some time talking about the moment. Tony had taken some time to read a very rare book written by Col Raff in 1942 talking about the 503 Airborne and their heroism. I was even more honored.
This truly was a “bridge of significance” for all of us.
Another truly significant bridge between past and future was engineered and constructed between Supreme Grandmaster Nam Suk Lee and his last students in San Pedro at the YMCA. It was in the true spirit of martial arts most important, inseparable, and simple components..."honor and tradition..." between teacher and students, patriots and country between a man with a message and a messenger willing to bear its weight.
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Photo: 1999 San Pedro YMCA Regular Promotion Test where Supreme Grandmaster Nam Suk Lee judged some of his favorite students. (Left to Right Denise Der, Supreme Grandmaster Nam Suk Lee, Grandmaster Jon Wiedenman, and Claudia Montez)
When I see this photo I feel something very, very significant. I have looked at hundreds of photographs from Korea documenting the early Kwans and certainly almost all available related to Chang Moo Kwan's formation and my teacher Supreme Grandmaster Nam Suk Lee. I have never seen an early photo, at least form the late 1940's and early 1950's of female students involved in formal martial arts classes. No females. So I realized something very significant in regards to Supreme Grandmaster Nam Suk Lee and his training at the YMCA in San Pedro: he was. probably for the first time in his life, teaching young women. Wow.
This photo is very symbolic of the open minded bridge builder Supreme Grandmaster Nam Suk Lee was. At the time this photo was taken, he had several months of working with the San Pedro YMCA, and he had become very familiar with our students. In this photo Supreme Grandmaster has his arm around Claudia Montez, and is surrounded by Denise and Truman Der. I see another bridge, the universal one, a man who spoke virtually no English communicating with his compassion what he knew would be Chang Moo Kwan's future.
I urge you to reflect on all of life's events which led Chang Moo Kwan's founder up to the specific frozen moment, and on cannot help but be awestruck at the juncture. Born in the oppression of Korea under Japanese Imperialism, a teenager when the allied forces freed Korea for a brief calm between storms, rendered asunder politically when North fought South in a tragic and bloody conflict which was the Korean War, rising up undaunted to spread his beloved art of Chang Moo Kwan to almost every continent, and then one day finding yourself in a Sea Side in the Western United States, where, a student s like Claudia, Truman, and Denise extend their open minds and willing spirits to you, with our reservations, demands, hidden objectives.
Just as Supreme Grandmaster Nam Suk Lee brought Chang Moo Kwan to the people he could serve best at the YMCA in Seoul Korea in 1946, he was "at" it again. Were his classes in the 1940's so different, or did Supreme Grandmaster Nam Suk Lee just speak a Universal Language? These students all seem to understand his message. Powerful.
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