Domo Arigato, Sensei

When I was nineteen, I signed up for a self-defense course to meet my physical education requirement at the community college where I was starting my college career.

The instructor was a booming-voiced, blunt-spoken man who told us at the beginning of the first class that if any of us had a problem with bowing in respect to the picture of Jigoro Kano, the founder of Judo, to the dojo, or to each other we could get up and walk out right then. 

Coming from a conservative Christian background where bowing and worship was for God alone, and with the examples of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (or Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah as my dad called them rather than their Babylonian-slave names) choosing to be thrown into a fiery furnace instead of bowing their knees to King Nebuchadnezzar’s golden statue, I sat on the gym floor with the other new students battling with my faith-based-conscience over whether or not I should get up and leave.

I didn’t.

Little did I know that by choosing that class, not leaving on the first day (for respect was different than worship), and meeting Sensei Bert Becerra my life would take an unexpected turn and never be the same again.  

Up to that point, my plan had been to get a degree in English (literature or writing) and use what I learned to become a writer. It’d seemed an easy enough path to take. All I had to do was write a great novel. Then another. I’d be the next Harper Lee. I’d be the next Dorothy Sayers. I’d be as often read and studied by future generations as Homer.

I did get my degree in Literary Studies. And eventually, I buckled down and wrote. But while I was doing that and before I got serious with storycraft, I got swept into a world I hadn’t known existed; the world of Judo.

It happened simply enough when during one class, Bert told me, “You could be good at this. You should come to my dojo in Garland.”

So I did.

I don’t know exactly what Bert saw in me. Maybe discipline. Maybe an obsessive drive. Maybe coachability. Maybe just another student to pay club dues. Whatever it was, he saw it and said what he thought. As he always did.

Bert was a Cuban native who’d spent time in Miami and then, of course, came to Dallas, a national and international champion, and a champion storyteller. His stories were blends of truth and legend. Did he defect in Canada, running through the streets in his underwear or did he defect in a European country and sprint to the Swiss Embassy? Did he really have a pet monkey? Did he live in Japan for 17 years? Had he been a cop in Miami? Maybe.

Tall tales or otherwise, Bert loved Judo and he loved winning the team trophy at any tournament he took us to.  

My first tournament was a local one. There, I weighed in for the first time. Focused more on belt rank and age, I wasn’t even sure what weight category I’d be in. I didn’t know that Judo competitors obsessed over weight, cutting before tournaments in order to make specific weight categories that would allow them to use strength and height to best advantage. I was so green, I was embarrassed when the weigh-in moderator asked me if I’d like to take off my jeans to see if I could be in the next lower weight category. I knew next to nothing beyond a handful of Judo throws and some mat work. More than the fighting, I was nervous I’d bow wrong at the edge of the mat and at the competitor starting point even though Bert made us practice that in class.  

I can’t remember if I even thought to have my parents come to watch me compete. I can’t remember my individual matches. What I do remember is that I won. And I was hooked.

I went to every class. Four nights a week? Five? Plus Saturdays? I was there.

At that time, the majority of Becerra Judo’s competitors were kids. I was one of the first, if not the first, young adult, college-age competitor Bert had. This, of course, allowed him, as a club, to enter more divisions at tournaments. Well, one more division. Mine. As I went from white to yellow to green belt, Bert encouraged me to compete in as many tournaments around Texas as there were. Seeing an opportunity for me to win in my weight and rank category, he once took me to a collegiate competition in Ohio. Just me.

He kept me at green belt for a long time. And at brown belt for even longer. This was mostly because I’d managed to be good enough at the basics to beat the other new competitors in those lower categories and he liked for us to win. But also, I needed the experience. At the higher levels, many Judoka had a decade or more mat experience than I did. And while I had a great work ethic, passion, and strength in my favor, I lacked the time and ingrained technique.

While Bert’s coaching method was not exactly technical-tactical, it was more of a “get out there and do your thing” approach, he did value the technical Japanese style and did his best to provide me with opportunities to better myself as a Judoka. One year, he took me to a Judo Coaches Clinic in San Jose, California. He took me and another Judoka to a school to do a Judo demonstration. He had me at his side when he talked to other coaches and athletes. Whenever Judo clinics popped up, he encouraged me to go to them. At some event somewhere, he pushed me to go talk with Lynn Roethke, two-time Olympian and World Champion Silver medalist, who told me she saw her competition opponents as enemies she had to destroy, rabble who didn’t deserve to be in the same place as she was.

I never had that level of competitive aggression/fighter’s spirit which is why I never achieved the level of success I desired (I was going for the Olympic dream), but I was still dedicated to the sport. I still followed the gentle way. I still do (philosophically at any rate).

Because I met Bert.

Bert was a master at getting people to do things for him. In my heyday with Becerra Judo, I somehow often ended up booking flights and hotel rooms for him, working out logistical issues, and organizing rideshares. Once, decades later, when I stopped by his club to visit, he sent me down the plaza to get him donuts for his breakfast. He never had any problem telling me or anyone else what to do. Or how to do it. He was brusque, loud, and had absolutely no filter. It was all part of his larger-than-life charm.

In a world where club loyalty was soul—and Bert was always talking about kicking so-and-so out of the club for some betrayal or the other—when it came up, Bert didn’t begrudge me the opportunity to go train at the Olympic Training Center.

At state tournaments, there weren’t many competitors at my weight class and in my age category. Too often, I was the only one in my division. There I was, dressed in my Judo gi, warmed up and ready to go, but with no one to fight. At the dojo, I trained with men, a few other women, and the younger boys and girls. But I had no one at my skill level who was my weight or gender. It was becoming harder for me to continue to improve. Bert knew this.

After I graduated college, with his blessing, I moved to Colorado.

There, at home in the mountains, I stayed obsessed with Judo for a while longer, training with elite-level athletes, being part of clinics and workshops, competing at as many local, national, and international tournaments as I could, going to Nationals and the U.S. Open, and making lifelong friends.

When I went home for holidays or tournaments, I made it point to stop by the dojo. When it came time to be promoted to black belt, Bert promoted me. He gave me one of his old belts and, though I had to wrap it three times around my waist, I wore it for all my subsequent practices and competitions until I’d worn it threadbare. I was the first student he promoted to black belt. I’m still surprised to be the one to hold that honor. I still have that belt.    

After an elbow injury and the expiration of the 2004 Olympics (to which I’d yearned to go, but for which I didn’t even make the Trials), I retired from competitive Judo and took up competitive Olympic Weight Lifting. Shortly thereafter, my body broke down and I had to step away from high-level athletics altogether so I could learn moderation and pursue health.

Bert never quite understood this. He hadn’t had to deal with an autoimmune disorder of his own, and I didn’t often like to talk the details about my aching joints. When I’d left for the bigger leagues, I think he’d expected me to come home and take over the on-the-mat coaching of his club when I’d finished. I think he’d had other plans for my life. He’d dedicated his entire life to Judo and it had looked like I was going to do the exact same thing.

But, in much the same way that meeting him changed me forever, rheumatoid arthritis became another pivot point in my life.

His death came as a shock. Though he was 77 years old, there’d been no warning of ill health, no expectation that he wouldn’t continue yelling at us all for years to come, no reason to believe I couldn’t stop by the dojo to reminisce and gossip one more time.

Until he was gone, I hadn’t realized how strongly he’d been a pillar in the corner of my life. Someone who’d been there for me for 29 years. Someone who had seen my potential and encouraged it. Someone who carried memories which I also carried.

As a person with one core passion and steadfast devotion, he hadn’t understood my life after Judo. In those first number of years after I retired and couldn’t even help him with children’s classes when I came home to visit (because of pain I tried to hide), he would ask me why I wasn’t doing Judo, why I wasn’t married, why my stories weren’t being published, what was wrong with me?

But then, eventually, when I stayed as strange as I was, when I kept traveling, when I kept coming back to visit once or twice a year, those questions stopped. Instead, with a twinkle in his eye, he’d tease me about being “earthy.” And then we’d thumb through the past—people, places, events—like we were looking at photos. We’d talk about who we’d seen lately or what we’d heard so-and-so was up to. Invariably, he’d call up some other coach or player who’d known me and have me talk to them then and there.  

Without Bert, I would likely never have done any kind of competitive sport. I wouldn’t have moved to Colorado. I wouldn’t have many of my best friends. All the little byroads and highways I took after the age of nineteen have all been somehow connected to the road of that original self-defense class. Whatever my life is now, it is in some part due to Bert’s influence.

At his funeral, looking at the hundred-plus people there to pay respects, knowing the hundreds of others who couldn’t be there, it hit me hard how much one person can affect so many. How one person can change the course of a life. How much he’d changed mine.

He’d have liked the attention. He’d have liked the status.

If he’d been there, he’d have yelled at all of us about something. He’d have told some story that was just believable enough to be unbelievable or unbelievable enough to be believable. He’d have filled the room.

I’ll miss him. Since I can’t thank him in person, since I didn’t think to do it when I could have, I’ll thank him now for being where he was those many years ago so I could encounter him. I’ll thank him for changing my life.  

Rest in peace, Grandmaster Sensei. Rest in peace, Bert.