Gordon Buck's Ohana Kenpo

I am a first generation Huk Planas black belt. Although Huk was not my first Kenpo instructor, he is the utmost authority I have trained with in this art. My training with Huk has been invaluable, his wealth of knowledge in both Kenpo and the Malay arts seem to never run dry. I would also like to express my gratitude to the numerous people in my life who have helped me along my path of development, and I would like to touch on a few in particular who have been a major influence besides the aforementioned.

I am grateful to have attended two seminars with Mr. Parker before his passing. Although I would not say that this would qualify as having been trained by him, it was a valuable and treasured introduction to the man and his art.

I have lived here on and off throughout my life; the Big Island has been my home since 2000. Hawai'i has often been referred to as a "martial arts melting pot,” and the roots of American Kenpo are here. The influences of traditional Chinese, Japanese, Filipino and Hawaiian (such as lua) are evident in modern American Kenpo practice.

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While my first introduction to martial arts was at age 12, beginning with Danzan Ryu Jujitsu and Kodakan Judo, which were put to use street fighting in the rough neighborhoods of San Francisco where I grew up. It was not until many years later that I began training in Kenpo, as a result of feeling encumbered with multiple opponents. I've found out, "in the street," that odds are the numbers are against you.

In the late 1980s, Joe Ellerin opened the first Ed Parker’s American Kenpo studio in Hawai‘i, the Kona Martial Arts Center. I was among the first five students to walk in the door, along with the Elliot brothers (Dave, Rob and Jim) and Mark Donahoe. About a year or year and a half into our training, Scott Higgins (Parker/Tatum lineage) joined the studio as an instructor.

Higgins had a really effective old-school, beat-down approach. He would push us until we were staggering with an endorphin drunk, and couldn’t think, but only react. He’d then follow us up to the local Circle K after class, where we would go to get a Big Gulp and a huge sugar rush, replacing our body fluids with carbonation and syrup.. We’d then start flapping our lips about what an awesome training we’d had that night, and before you knew it, we were back down at the studio after hours, talking another beating.

Ellerin, on the other hand, was at the complete opposite end of the spectrum of the art and leaned toward the healing side. He is an impeccable Kenpo technician whose forms are beautiful, with explosive speed. He’d tune us up after our beatings with a good acupuncture session and quite often led as a spiritual mentor.

Ed Parker came to Hawai’i twice during that time and was genuinely pleased to be back home. The seminars he held here were special because Parker was able to connect with his family and roots as a Hawaiian. It was in Hawaii that he learned the foundations of his art from Professor William Chow and one could sense his emotional joy upon returning here. The seminar groups at the Hawaii studios were very small, thus allowing each of us to spend a little personal time with the man. Mr. Parker was traveling to Hawai‘i in December of 1990 to test our group for brown belt when he passed away on his home soil. His fatal heart attack as he stepped off the plane in Honolulu was a shock to us, and a huge tragedy for his family, friends and martial artists worldwide.

The Hawai‘i Kenpo group was a particularly close-knit one. The people that I trained with in Kona during this period of time were instrumental in the development of my base in this art, and I value my relationship with every one of them to this day. They all believed in keeping it real.

In 1991 I moved back to California, to Redding in the north central part of the state. There I started training with Scott Halsey, a fine young black belt who at the time was running his own school and wearing a second degree black belt. I trained with Scott for almost a year when in walks another Kenpo black belt – Al Myrtle, who had previously been Halsey’s instructor. Both Myrtle and Halsey, at that time, were direct students under Huk Planas.

For me, this was like a flashback to my childhood. Myrtle had been a co-student under the same instructor during my 12th grade training in Dan Zan Ryu Jujitsu.

We all trained together in the same school for another four years. During this time I achieved my black belt, testing with Huk Planas under Halsey and Myrtle. Scott and I went in business together, opening up a second school in Red Bluff, a town about 40 minutes south of Redding.

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In 1997, I suffered a massive burn injury that set me back in my personal training for at least a year. An industrial chemical spill left me severely burned and resulted in numerous skin grafts, an extremely depleted metabolic rate and a lack of physical stamina. I had never really realized, until that time, how instrumental the operation of the organ of the skin is in one’s life!

If Frank Camponelli and Al Myrtle, both Kenpo black belts, had not been there to assist with my recovery, I may not have ever made it back to full mobility. Their sheer dedication to the healing aspects of the art – and to truly being there for another Kenpo back belt – is something I will always be profoundly grateful for. Every day, twice a day, for at least ten months, they came over to stretch my limbs and work my tissue back into a point of complete mobility – sometimes even in pretty gruesome circumstances, like when I’d be bleeding through my bandages. It took a lot of fortitude on their part.

Just when I’d fallen into thinking about all the ways I would be restricted as a result of my injuries and feeling sorry for myself, Myrtle forced me out of bed, up onto my feet, and made me start doing my forms, starting with Short Form One and going up through the gamut. He included some old forms, too.

About a year and half after my burn episode, I had recovered enough to test for my second black with Huk Planas.

I returned to Hawaii in 2000 and taught at Dave Elliot’s school for two years, then decided to open a school further south to serve that particular community. At about the same time I began training in Amok! with Tom Sotis and Dave Elliot.

I opened ‘Ohana Kenpo in late 2003 and then started explorations of other martial arts such as Sayok Kali and Pancak Silat/Mande Muda with Guru Bahati Mershant, Bernard Chong and Bamb Bang Suwanda, the surviving brother and training partner of the man responsible for bringing Silat to the US, Pendekar Herman Suwanda. I travel every year to Indonnesia to study with Suwanda, who calls the art in which we now train “Sudanese Sulat.”

I teach at my school, ‘Ohana Kenpo, in Kona, and have started up a second group in Ka’u near South Point, as well as pursuing continuing training in Silat and the knifing arts. I’m working on incorporating the arts that I am learning into my practice, provided that they don’t conflict with the proper principles and concepts of motion.

With the help of my student and close friend Annlee Wright, I started a special needs Kenpo program for developmentally disabled adults, for which we were given a “Community Heroes” award in 2004. My ‘Ohana Kenpo studio has won the “Best of West Hawaii’s Martial Arts Studios” award for the last 4 years in a row.

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Ohana Kenpo