I loved this man.

And the irony is that he never spent a minute of his life trying to be loved. He spent EVERY minute of his life trying TO love. Graduating from prestigious New York University to become a teacher in inner-city New York can only be an act of love. He loved his students, but he loved the idea of education, and he loved the idea that he was helping, that he was a force for good in the world. So in that way, he really was a Samurai: the word which actually means “to serve.”

And when it was not enough to teach his students biology and grammar, he began giving them martial arts instruction, another form of love, and another form of order. And when that wasn’t enough, he began giving them life coaching. Starting in the mid-1960s, a string of these mentees who, lets be honest, were not quite college material, with quiet encouragement from him, ended up serving in the United States Military. In 1982 I became the last one. I’ve met many of the others before me (Joe Miller, Carlos Medina, Jesus Bonilla) and we all agree that it was the best thing we did.

And when that wasn’t enough, he learned how to heal people and became a Doctor. For many years, he taught Chelsea High School during the day, and healed people in his office in Westwood, NJ at night. He loved the idea of a patient limping in and walking out. He loved “fixing” things. He loved the order of it. When tragedy found each of us, he never flinched and never hesitated; we weren’t consoled as much as we were “treated.”

In the spirit of Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life, it is impossible to guess how many lives were lifted up by his existence. I can only speak for my own. But George Bailey couldn’t carry my Sensei’s gym bag.

When I came along in the late 1970s, Doc and Byrd had an empty nest, and that nest had to be filled. Enter…us.

Doc and Byrd took us into their family. We made the pilgrimages with our girlfriends, and later with our fiancés, and later with our children. They treated our wives like daughters and our children like grandchildren. They celebrated our victories, and they worried about us endlessly. But ultimately, they taught us by example.

My moral and ethical education began in the TAAZ bar, directly under the mat where I received my physical education, delivered by the same person. While I was getting my yellow belt and my green belt, I was receiving moral stories and allegories: the little girl who dressed herself up in a big suit, and took the meeting her boss should have taken, and never looked back. The Navy working party that didn’t get a hot meal at the end of their watch, and then did. And a cautionary tale of what institutions like Princeton are willing to do to drive short-term, politically correct outcomes. I received the first batch of allegories over pitchers of beer and pretzels. The last batch were delivered over a protein shake, an oatmeal cookie, and a scoop of non-fat frozen vanilla yogurt.

He was my Albus Dumbledore, headmaster of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and the most powerful wizard in the world, but he was also my Atticus Finch, the community pillar who did good work for the pure pleasure of doing good work. He did not serve as the president of the Westwood Board of Health because if was gratifying work (it was not). He did it because it needed to be done and it needed to be done well. His lack of ego and flash, his simplicity, and his “ordinariness” made him larger than life.  The essence of any move, we were carefully taught, is "what you don't see."

He needed to serve, and to educate and finally he needed to heal others, and this need was so enormous that it had its own weather system. That weather system became our Style. I’m not sure what I’m going to do without that weather system, but as I write this, I hear a low, calming, bedside-manner voice in my ear: “You’re going to get back on the mat, that’s what you’re going to do.”

I once drove him from Neely’s home in Connecticut to New Jersey, where Rich Faustini had invited him to give a seminar. Neely packed a lunch for us. Little designer sandwiches in little designer wrapping, and little designer bottled waters. I pulled into a park I knew of in Piermont New York, overlooking the Hudson River and the Tappan Zee Bridge. Lunch was delicious, and the water, somehow, was still cold. We spoke about Ju Jitsu, and about its reflection, life. He wondered out loud how it would end. I offered him a quote by Ho Chi Minh (ok, maybe not his favorite historical figure), who told his followers the only thing he was planning on taking with him was what he was leaving behind.

Doc smiled and looked out over the river. We continued on to the seminar. And it was a beautiful seminar.