Jack L. Coleman

1937 - 2019

Jack L. Coleman

Mr. Jack L. Coleman, formerly of Toledo, passed on August 20th with his family by his side in San Marcos, CA. He was eighty-two years of age, born August 11, 1937 in Toledo, OH.

He is survived by his wife of twenty-seven years, Fran; seven brothers and sisters; six children; twelve grandchildren; seventeen great-grandchildren; three great-great-grandchildren; and many other family members. He was retired from the San Marcos School District after twenty-three years of service.

Jack Coleman was a lifelong karate practitioner, and to say he was a martial arts pioneer in this country doesn't begin to pay tribute to his dedication and all that he accomplished. His involvement in martial arts began at an early age and grew from seeking training to developing a major karate organization. During his lifetime he was involved in training tens of thousands of karate students. He touched the lives of many in a multitude of positive ways.

His training began in the early 1950's with judo. At that time karate was virtually unknown in this country. Through his judo connections he was able to find some karate training and traveled extensively to obtain bits and pieces.

His initial karate instruction was the Shoto-Kai system taught by Funakoshi students under Egami and Obata in Japan, and through Ed Peterman in Chicago. This was in 1956 and his backyard school gained its title of Funakoshi Karate Dojo from Mr. Peterman. There was no dedicated building at that time and students met in a park or garage. He kept that dojo name until he affiliated with the All Japan Karate-Do Association in 1959 or 1960.

In 1959 he opened his first formal dojo in Toledo. Around that time, he also began training with students of Izumigawa Kanki of the Senbu-Kan in Kawasaki, Japan – his early Goju-Ryu exposure.

It is important to remember that in those days there was no internet, no karate magazines, no karate movies. The only way to research martial arts at the time was telephone, book store catalogs, and word of mouth. It was exceedingly difficult to find training.

It is also important to remember that WWII was still fresh in people's minds, and anything Japanese was greeted with skepticism. Karate students often had their loyalty to the United States questioned. That made establishing a program in a public school or YMCA challenging.

In 1960 or 1961 the dojo moved to a larger facility (concrete floor) and had about sixty members. Uniforms were homemade as there was no commercial source in the USA. Rank designations were white belt, brown belt, and black belt. The kyu and dan system was added much later. Training was three to four hours a session, five days a week.

At this time Mr. Coleman worked hard to get the news out, to build the dojo membership, and educate the general public to the character development goals of traditional karate. There were many karate demonstrations presented in school systems, the YMCA, local universities, the AAU and NCAA, boxing gyms, county fairs, community centers, and so on. As a result, the general public and news media started paying attention.

In 1962 Mr. Coleman received a request to attend the first open karate tournament held in the United States. It was at the old Madison Square Gardens in New York and the request was from Peter Urban and Masutasu Oyama. Peter Urban opened his Chinatown Dojo in New York in 1959 and was the founder of USA Goju. Mas Oyama was the founder of the Kyokushin-Kai. At the meeting it was proposed that Mr. Coleman join with them to form a National Goju-Ryu Organization. He declined. It is worth noting that Robert Trias of Arizona was advocating his own Goju/Shorei training in the early sixties which would result in the USKA.

By 1963 karate was gaining public notice and the membership grew very rapidly. There were about ten programs under Mr. Coleman's direction in the Toledo area at that time. The University of Toledo program was added in 1964 and the University of Bowling Green in 1965. These were among the very first university level karate programs in the United States. Several of the programs maintained more than one hundred members each.

In 1966 the organization had grown to about thirty programs in four states and several thousand members. At this time, it was decided to become part of the USA Goju-Kai under Gogen Yamaguchi of Japan, and the local organization was named the Mid-West Goju-Kai. That affiliation lasted until the early seventies.

In the 1967-1968 time period, Mr. Coleman became very active at the national level in the AAU and FAJKO/WUKO collaboration to establish karate in the Olympic Games. He was requested to attend the first meeting in Albuquerque, NM as the National Goju-Kai representative from the Mid-west. He was also very active in tournament competition and had personal experience with such notables as Chuck Norris, Mike Stone, Bill Wallace and Joe Lewis.

In 1969 the Shindo-Kan Dojo was established in Toledo as the "hombu" dojo or main school of the Mid-West Goju-Kai.

By the mid-1970s, the Mid-west Goju-Kai (MGK) under Mr. Coleman's leadership had schools in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, New York and Florida; and was the oldest and largest Traditional Goju-Ryu Karate-Do organization in the United States.

In 1978 Mr. Coleman relocated to California and initiated three karate programs there.

In 1981 the Mid-west Goju-Kai was reorganized into the Goju-Ryu Karate-Do Kyokai to acknowledge the organization's expansion domestically and internationally.

In 1982 Mr. Coleman suffered a serious accident and had extensive surgery which dramatically limited his physical ability, but he continued to advise and consult and remained actively involved nationally during his lifetime.

Throughout Mr. Coleman's lifetime participation in martial arts, he was in contact with the leaders of the other major karate organizations in the United States. He was a significant contributor from the very early days of karate in this country through its dramatic growth and maturation. He was a pioneer certainly, but his contributions continued throughout karate's existence in the United States. He will be remembered.

Mr. Coleman's presence was so great that it seemed he would be with us forever, but it was not to be. Farewell and God speed good Sir.