This weekend in Pittsburgh at the Eastern United States International Black Belt Hall of Fame Award has been a delight. I met some wonderful people, serious martial artists and humble human beings. The keyword here is community. They area tight knit community of martial artists in which diversity in ethnicity is quite apparent, where the contributions of women are valued as much as that of men, and those with special needs were encouraged and celebrated for their accomplishments as well. I had a great time, the event was well organized and conducted in an extremely professional manner by Mr Kanzler. I thank him for allowing me to participate at the last minute.
Dr Lawrence Day is a gregarious old gentleman with a wry sense of humor.
He is a master of his art and is revered by his students. He is surrounded by a group of exemplary men and women who he is constantly encouraging and advising and promising he will stop drinking, something I heard the first time I spoke to him on the phone.
He told me his nickname back in his Drill Sergeant days was “psycho.” This was the name he was known by in Dante’s School. Day would come up to Chicago on weekends and sometimes make it to class and sometimes not. His relationship with Dante was not special, it was business. He told me Dante taught class above 5 times the whole time he was there. Konsevic taught a lot of the classes. Day was not a black belt at that time. But he is clear in that he paid his $30.00 a month. As a martial artist, Dante was a role model, if not idol, of his. Studying under Dante was something he always wanted to do from the first time he heard about him. He does not oversell his role in all this. He was there to learn from a man he thought had the right idea of what the martial arts was really about.
Like so many Dante students, he is still active in the arts. He continues his study and advances into the internal martial arts.
Dr Day gave me pictures of his Tai Chi Instructor, a petite Chinese Woman named Yuzee Yeh who had moved to Lexington, KY. He also showed me something a bit odd. It is a picture of her teacher. I want to get some more information before I talk about him. Once I speak to Dr Day again and get the proper name I will maybe reveal that. This story does have it’s odd elements, and they get odder.
Now just so I am clear, let me just say no one ever said Felkoff was a student of Keehan. Felkoff has never claimed to me to be a student of Keehan’s. It is quite the contrary. Felkoff was a contemporary of Keehan’s. He had his own Shotokan school above Touguri Imports on Belmont and would cover classes for Keehan when he attended to his other businesses.
Keehan was a businessman as was Felkoff. They were both in the business of martial arts education and training. They often collaborated and had the same Dim Mak teacher, Richard Lee, in Chicago. It is well know they were close associates and he is best friend of one of Dante’s most talented students, Tolo-naa(Raymond Cooper). Felkoff was not a member of the USKA, or the WKF, or so I thought!
Felkoff left Chicago long ago and I found him in the course of my research and have made some verification of the things he has told me.
One thing is clear and evident, he has knowledge and experience of the things that he talks about. It would be very easy for anyone who was really concerned about the veracity of his claims to have been here in Pittsburgh to ask him about them.
I keep getting questions about Mike Felkoff from people who are really not old enough to know much about him or anything else at all. He never claimed much except to have been with Keehan the night of the dojo/dragon was and to have survived it.
What he did not tell is what I am posting . His membership card for the World Karate Federation dated 1967 and signed by Count Dante, and his membership certificate for the Black Dragon Fighting Society signed by Count Dante and the Chief Examiner, William V Aguiar, dated 1974. His WKF membership card had an expiration date of “indefinite.”
The Dante signature appears to me to match the signature of Count Dante on some legal douments I have been provided with recently.
Felkoff was inducted into the International Black Belt Hall of Fame because of his experience and his ability to produce certificates proving his claims.
Research require verification where possible. I am trying my best to be as through as possible with information I acquire for the film.
