The Funeral Home Dojo

It was the fall of 1965 when Lemuel (Doc) Stroud and I enrolled in our first formal ju jitsu class.  Most of the martial arts world at that time didn't seem to be interested in ju jitsu.  Everyone seemed to be karate-do motivated.  In a way we were lucky because karate and ju jitsu were taught at the same dojo.  We did everything the karate class did plus the ju jitsu.

Training didn't stop at 9:00 p.m. when class was over.  We were lucky enough to be motivated to use every resource possible to enhance our training.  After the first few training classes, we would practice everything we learned many times. It would get to the place, as months passed by, that our outside training exceeded our formal training.  A weekend or a day off just meant more time to train.

Doc was a North Carolina licensed mortician at a local funeral home.  He lived in the upstairs apartment at the funeral home with his family.  Most of the time I had a place there when I wanted it.

One night after class we were talking about how nice it would be if we had a place to train with mats other than the formal dojo. It wasn't long before we found one--the attic of the funeral home.  The attic was much larger than most people's living rooms with plenty of headroom.

Doc remembered the padding that comes in every casket.  Sometimes it's all needed, and sometimes you remove some for larger bodies. That padding was the foundation for our mats. We also used some discarded tents to drape over the padding with some artificial grass.  I  liked the grass because your toes didn't get caught as they did in the tent material--34 years later our toes still having lasting injuries.

That funeral home dojo was probably the most intense training we ever had. Sometimes it would be after midnight when we quit, not counting the two nights a week at the dojo.

This lasted until the US Army called me for a little tour in Japan and Vietnam.  After my tour with the Army, I came back and a new group was training. One guy weighed 300 pounds plus.  We threw him the best we could in the top of the funeral home. When he hit the floor there was a chain reaction with the windows rattling.

It wasn't long after Doc and I had returned to Japan for more training that the funeral home dojo was about to close. One afternoon Doc was washing the funeral home's car fleet when all of a sudden a loud explosion was heard. There was dust and debris everywhere! It was coming out of the doors and windows and anywhere there seemed to be an opening in the funeral home.

What had happened was that all of the plaster ceiling on the first floor had fallen. The owner said it was from Doc and me throwing that "ole big boy." The funeral home dojo closed after that.