TDC (Triple Dragon Clan)

Tripledragon Style Martial Arts and later we named our Gaming team or clan TDC (TripleDragon Clan). The term Tripledragon has multiple meanings to us, in respect to several things in our lives. Originally, the style of martial arts we gravitated to, had 3 major fighting methods, not to be limited to those 3, but were; Tae Kwon Do, Wing Chun Kung Fu, and American Boxing. My oldest son, whom just happened to be Paul W. Freeman THE THIRD, began training at the age of 2 and went on to become a 2nd Degree Black Belt with his own school that he instructed the always adapting style within.

I later had 3 more sons, that we consider a manifestation of the TripleDragon tradition, they grew up hearing and learning about the Tripledragon style and history and incorporated it into their own lives in different ways, like the gaming and teamwork. One of the three even coined the nickname "Hydragon", which has multiple meanings, one being a 3 headed Dragon and he just happens to be the most multifaceted of the 3, and very unorthodox, which can be good or bad sometimes. The other being MasterDragon, very stable and consistent, but with the ability to adapt when necessary. And Wizard2K or "Wiz" the brains and strategist of the bunch.

My Chinese astrological sign is the "Dragon", born 12 years after Bruce Lee. Early on, I coined the name KidDragon, which I use to this day as my gaming name and I still feel like a big kid most of the time, and my wife says I act like one too.

    Throughout my life I was intrigued by the martial arts. Being of small stature, and a fear of bullies, encouraged it, I'm sure. But when I was young, the martial arts was still a mystery to many of us in the U.S. There appeared to be something almost supernatural about it. Many years later, I found out why. It was a secret art, protected by it's people. I lived through the transition years as many others did. It was not easy, and made the goal that much more exciting to achieve.

    I wanted to study martial arts when I was young, but I was afraid and my family couldn't afford the lessons. I had my share of fights growing up. When I was a teenager, I saw a few dominant fighters immerge around town. Most were either athletes or just weight lifting street fighters. Some of the fights I saw at parties and the swimming pool were eye opening and bloody. The strongest survived. Once in a while someone with speed and some boxing skills would win.

    I didn't want to fight, but I didn't want to get mutilated either. I had a couple of close calls that I wasn't sure if I could win or not. I didn't want to hurt anyone, I just wanted to be able to keep someone from hurting me or my family to be.

    Lo and behold in the early 70's, the Kung Fu movies began to roll out. I heard about "Five fingers of Death", but to my good fortune, the first Kung Fu movie I went to see was "Fists of Fury", starring Bruce Lee. I was shocked, but inspired. He was small, but devastating. His speed was what caught my attention the most at that time. I'd never seen anyone move that fast or with such "fluidity". I must have went back to see that movie 5 times or more.

    Then within a short time it seemed, "Enter the Dragon" was at the theatre. I couldn't wait to see it. I lost count of the times I've seen that movie.

    I had visited some classical martial arts schools, and just didn't feel like that was what I wanted to study. I had seen some of these students get into little skirmishes with each other and some street fighters and they didn't do so well. I thought there must be something missing. There has to be a way to become an effective fighter in a much shorter time! It appeared that it took most people years to become effective when studying certain styles. I began to try to emulate some of the moves I saw Bruce use in the movies. They weren't very good at first, but with a lot of practice, began to feel pretty good. I had no confidence to try to use what I had learned, but it was a start.

At this point, I was in my early 20's. As fate would have it, I met two martial artists at work. One was a salesman, the other was a technician like me. After getting to know them I found out one was an ex-Navy Seal, and the other had studied in the Philippines while serving in the military also.  I couldn't believe the opportunity that had dropped in my lap. I begged them to teach me. I felt very comfortable with them, and we were friends at work. They agreed, to work with me in their spare time and not charge me any money. That was good, because I didn't have much money. But I had a great desire to learn. We finally met at one of their apartments, and they had a spare room we could work out in. They started showing me some stretches and basic kicks, punches and blocks. It still didn't look any thing like what I had seen Bruce Lee do, but it was another start. When the two guys finally sparred with each other, it scarred the daylights out of me. They were better than I had thought, I was in trouble. Sometimes I thought they were going to tear the place down. Never had I seen such speed and power in a confrontation. And yet they had great control. This had potential. They were very patient with me and taught me a lot. And they didn't give me a hard time about this unknown style I was trying to incorporate into what they were teaching. As a matter of fact joked around with me a lot about it, and in some ways I think they shared the desire to incorporate other good moves into what they already knew. It was much harder for them to change than for me to just learn with the new stuff as part of my style, that was interesting.

    I've got to tell one story about one of these two good men, just so you can imagine how good they might have been. One of them could start out in a sitting position, place his hands on the floor at his side, lift himself up so his legs were straight out and the only thing touching was his fingertips. Then he would pull himself through his arms up to a handstand and hold it for awhile. Then he would come back down the way he went up, through the arms, stay up with legs straight out, and slowly lower himself to the floor. Incredible feat of upper body strength, and his pecs and lats showed it.

    Steve was the ex-Navy Seal, and we became like brothers, even rooming together for awhile. I'm thankful for the friendship we have. We helped each other through a lot of hard times in our lives. We had a lot of fun times, I'll never forget them. We sparred a lot too. I have a deep respect for Steve, a very unique and genuine individual. You don't meet someone like this very often in ones life. I always knew I could count on Steve when the chips were down.

    I began to read everything I could get my hands on about martial arts. I especially tried to read anything I could find that Bruce Lee wrote or was written about him. He was definitely different than anyone I read about. His ideas about change for the martial arts made sense to me. Little did I know that Bruce was making waves in the martial arts world.

    I kept practicing and incorporating what I could. I had some friends that studied martial arts, and encouraged me to visit their school. I was reluctant because of earlier visits to different schools. One friend even brought two sets of sparring equipment to my house and challenged me to a match. Of course I couldn't say no! To both of our surprises, it was a draw! We both scored good moves on each other, but had to work hard to do so. Considering I had never taken a lesson officially, and he was a green belt in Tae Kwon Do, I was very pleased with my progress. Shortly after this incident, my good friend Steve ask me to visit this very same school. I respected his opinion, so I did. He said I should study under this individual and that he was very impressed with him as a person and martial artist. I joined the dojo a short time later.

As fate would have it, another instructor taught at this same school, a Wing Chun Kung Fu instructor, one of only 5 in the US at the time. Keep
in mind Wing Chun was the core style Lee started with, and was a big influence on the style he developed. My Tae Kwon Do instructor was incorporating the blocking system from Wing Chun into his style. I was able to also stay after class, and observe the Wing Chun class sometimes also. Interestingly one the top students in the Tae Kwon Do class had studied many styles and was an excellent boxer, we later became good friends and studied martial arts together for many years to come. He was the fastest guy I'd encountered to date, he had a jab like Sugar Ray Lenard.
 

Well ran out of time for now, more later!