Car­ol Quash

The Web­ster's New World Col­lege Dic­tio­nary de­fines a hero as "any per­son, es­pe­cial­ly a man, who is ad­mired for his qual­i­ties or achieve­ments and is re­gard­ed as an ide­al or mod­el"–a fit­ting de­scrip­tion, some would say, of Pro­fes­sor Don Ja­cob, a man who has made a ma­jor con­tri­bu­tion to the de­vel­op­ment of mar­tial arts both lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

Val­ue of dis­ci­pline

As founder and CEO of the pop­u­lar Barataria-based Pur­ple Drag­on Karate Do­jo, Ja­cob has made his ver­sion of mar­tial arts, Don Jit­su Ryu, a lifestyle rather than just a sport, one that has been em­braced by the world. But char­i­ty be­gins at home and, ac­cord­ing to Ja­cob, the dis­ci­pline that is man­dat­ed by the sport has con­tributed to the suc­cess of many of T&T's pub­lic fig­ures, among them Min­is­ter of Sports Gary Hunt, Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie and Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs Pe­ter Tay­lor.

In fact, the in­flu­ence of Ja­cob's tute­lage has been so po­tent, the Sports Min­is­ter has at­trib­uted the knowl­edge passed on to him by this mar­tial arts gu­ru as one of the ma­jor de­vel­op­men­tal fac­tors in his life. "Nine­ty-five per cent of who I am as a per­son is be­cause of the dis­ci­pline I ac­quired as a stu­dent of his (Ja­cob). That dis­ci­pline has con­tributed to my abil­i­ty to work long hours, to be de­ter­mined and re­lent­less. Pro­fes­sor has been a fa­ther, a men­tor and at times a spir­i­tu­al guide and he must be com­mend­ed for his con­tri­bu­tion to thou­sands of youths of this na­tion.He has been the on­ly one to pi­o­neer an in­dige­nous sys­tem all over the world and I am proud of him," said Hunt.

Where is the love?

But al­though Ja­cob has suc­cess­ful­ly tak­en the art of Don Jit­su Ryu around the world, he ad­mit­ted his at­tempts to mar­ket the sys­tem lo­cal­ly have been met with some op­po­si­tion. "This sys­tem has been around since 1975, yet church­es at­tack us be­cause we med­i­tate and peo­ple say it is a vi­o­lent sport. It is strange how the style is ac­cept­ed in coun­tries all over the world but here it seems like noth­ing. "Don Jit­su Ryu, like pan, was born and bred in T&T and its amaz­ing how peo­ple can­not ap­pre­ci­ate their own." He said Don Jit­su Ryu was sim­ply a com­bi­na­tion of men­tal and phys­i­cal strength that, if chan­neled in the right di­rec­tion, could work won­ders for a per­son's holis­tic de­vel­op­ment.

To fight or not to fight

Re­gard­ing us­ing the sys­tem as a means of self de­fence, Ja­cob took a mo­ment to re­flect on the man­ner in which his son An­to­nio De Fre­itas, a mar­tial arts ex­pert, was killed in a vi­o­lent at­tack on De­cem­ber 24, 2002. He said he found it un­for­tu­nate that crit­ics and de­trac­tors did not make the ef­fort to un­der­stand what the sport was all about and what it could achieve. "If a man comes to at­tack your life and you have the skill to evade it, you do it. But if you have to fight for your life you do that too. My son died fight­ing, not be­cause he want­ed to fight, but be­cause he had to de­fend him­self.

"Mar­tial arts is a se­ri­ous thing. It's a com­bi­na­tion of men­tal and phys­i­cal strength. You have to find the equi­lib­ri­um and I think this, com­bined with spir­i­tu­al val­ues, is the an­swer to the crime prob­lem in this coun­try," he added. He said it was un­for­tu­nate that mar­tial arts were not as heav­i­ly in­vest­ed in as oth­er sports. "If the pow­ers that be would in­vest in it, then young peo­ple would get more in­volved and then there would be few­er idle hands. "What is that say­ing? Idle hands are the dev­il's work­shop? "Who knows. If the Don Jit­su Ryu is giv­en a chance, it may even be able to help with the in­dis­ci­pline in the Par­lia­ment," he chuck­led.