THE SLEEPING DRAGON

He came to the Pacific Northwest from the streets of Chicago, via the U.S. Army.

Long before we became friends, I recall having met him during a workout at the Ft. Lewis gym. We were both in the Army. He walked up, introduced himself, then asked what I was doing. For all I knew, he was a spectator. But even then, I was taken by his noble presence. He was jet black, and presented with the quintessential lines of a remote Mandingo heritage.

I remember his enormous pool of natural physical talents. Not infrequently, masters of the martial arts possess special combinations of martial skills and natural talents which make them unique among teachers, establishing them as creators, or channelers, breathing new life and energy into practices which have evolved for ages. He was that!

Earl Squalls was "new ground" if he was anything at all. He embodied forces in the martial arts, which were the antithesis of tradition and custom. He was raised in Chicago. Though he never referred to his home as a ghetto, it was clear from his own life style he was raised poor. He was completely at home living in ramshackle tenements, driving unlicensed, falling-apart cars, and existing on one meal a day, mostly something picked up happenstance at the corner food market. This was normal life for him.

Without positive endowment, a child in the inner city soon falls into the usual cycle of evolvement. Pick up basketball games at the playground, corner handball games...spending an allotted hour at the city swimming pool. With adolescence comes the despair, the stark realization that even at age 16, 17, and 18 life's opportunities have passed by. How does one in the prime of youth, yearning for growth, wanting to give, and to create, find hope when the door is shut. Talent is not cultivated in the ghetto...it survives, at best. Of course, you may not have experienced this, and if you haven't, may even be postured to let rip with a blitz of counters.  Fact is, if you haven't lived it, you are no closer to understanding the subtleties of inner city existence, than you are to understanding the fourth dimension. I've known others with backgrounds like Earl's, who were more free in expressing their recollections. They told of not seeing the doctor when they were sick, and their rotted teeth were in perpetual need of attention. They felt charted from birth to swirl indeterminate amidst those dark forces which imbue the inner city. Unless somehow, they could break away!

When Earl broke out...he never looked back!

Squalls was gifted. He was intelligent, and far exceeded the potentials for organized learning found in ghetto educational

NW Regional Karate Chanpionships - 1985:  Just when you thought you had him, he would score from nowhere.

facilities. His physical movement was remarkable. On the tournament floor, he appeared as though on skates, gliding effortlessly from one point to the next, always poised and able to change direction instantly, no matter what technique his opponent would conjure. He possessed that natural combination of speed, movement, power, finesse, and charisma which made him a perfect candidate for the martial arts.

He came to his knowledge anyway he could. Since lessons were generally out of the question, that usually meant by watching others, then copying their movements. He spoke of being an adolescent on the South side of Chicago, scratching up whatever money he could to see the Chinese movies. In those days, he would be one of few in the theater, sitting for hours scrutinizing each and every move, harvesting his own repertoire of movement. In time, he knew enough to trade techniques with more advanced practitioners. His learning accelerated. He and his friends were "making it up as they went along." For them, martial arts was what they saw on the silver screen, and read in comic books...filtered through the realities of their meager existences. Once, he showed me a photo album of his fellow students and his "Master." The Master was a "Swami" fellow, who appeared to be nothing more than a late adolescent street mug, staring defiantly at the camera, wearing a huge, Captain Hook earring (back when earrings were not acceptable style). A notation on the page, dedicated their training to "Count Dante," himself an enigmatic character in American Karate history, notorious for his outrageous behavior and later, his mail order promotional network. Earl took the album very seriously, and I remember thinking of how comical they all looked as I struggled not to offend with any indiscreet smiling. In retrospect, he shared this with me like someone fondly resurrecting memories of happier times.

Earl proudly recalled his Black Belt exam. He described how his "Masters" had staked out "some space," and set up various testing stations. "Just like in the movies," he said. And that's exactly how it was,...again, these people were taking it from wherever they could get it, and acting upon it as best they could.

In time, Earl mastered enough of the basics to test his skill against outsiders. His ability to explode with multiple kick

As a competitor, always in control.

combinations in machine gun fashion, made him an instant hit at tournaments. His smoothness, and innate ability to frustrate an attacker, drew crowds to his ring.

I knew him at his prime. Though some questioned his 4th degree Black Belt, his talent had genuine substance. A rare accomplishment in the martial arts is to win grand championship fighting, as well as grand championship kata at a major tournament. I saw Earl Squalls do it on four different occasions.

His greatest talent, and perhaps his tragic flaw was that Earl was forever a child. Karate, which had become his life, was also his fantasy. He was attempting to become the "man on the screen." As his accomplishments mounted, he waited for the world to beat down his door, offering movie contracts and "big money" to display his talents "on the circuit."

The Good Years

The world never came.

The money never materialized, nor did the national recognition. Still his whole life was Karate, and he became more deeply engrossed with the pursuit of his fantasy. In time, he devised his own system, defined by his characteristic sets of movements, and his unique brand of kata and philosophy. Though sometimes it smacked of its comic book inner city, Swami so-and-so origins, in the net, his enormous talent was enough to make the new system "stick." Other martial artists took notice.

By his late twenties, Earl was paying the price for having dedicated his life to the martial arts. He had been out of the Army for several years, and never used his GI Bill. He held to the letter of his "I will never work, if I can do Karate" creed, and was virtually destitute.

Through it all, he attempted to reach out to children, especially those from the inner city, sharing with them the joy he had gotten from the martial arts. For years, he sponsored and instructed children's classes in the city of Tacoma, and capped his efforts with a string of kid's tournaments that pioneered the concept of child oriented martial arts. He was a "pied piper," and children were always near about. I smile as I think of the times he played "Sensei Sez" with his class, or at his Halloween parties dressed up as an Oriental Master, or Chief Earl, reading to groups of children (and adults) from his ever present Kung Fu Quotations and Sayings.

As anyone who has attained the unenviable stature of middle age knows, life holds little tolerance for those who reject the normally allotted paths. Pioneers and rebels are uniformly ostracized by their peers until ample time has elapsed after their passing, to allow for the belated and deserved praise. As he progressed through his mid twenties, Earl began to suffer from the effects of his decision to do nothing but martial arts. He lost his car...and before long, his phone. He separated from his wife and family.

The forces of poverty rarely stop with the circumstances of poverty. Once in motion, they gain momentum, until the only recourse is the ultimate destruction of the person involved. For Earl, it meant a return to the vices of his upbringing. There was the marijuana, and the harder drugs...then there were the broken promises, the unrepaid loans, the failure to show up for class, and ultimately, the physical deterioration. During the evenings, he began showing up at the homes of students, ostensibly to "Talk to the parents,"...usually timing it to coincide with the evening meal.

Suddenly, there was news he was hospitalized with an asthma attack. He barely survived the attack. Until then, I never knew just how serious asthma could be, but then again, life is meant for learning. In his late twenties, his skills, though still impressive, had waned considerably. There were still occasional tournament championships, and always the adoration of the crowds, but the consistency and air of invincibility was gone. Even I could score on him.

This was a period when everything began to weigh on him at once. The gloomy Northwest winters can be unbearable, even without the weight of poverty, drug abuse, and fading self image. For months, he loitered at the homes of friends, depressed, reciting his past accomplishments, like a boxer who had experienced a lifetime of fights, and who had nothing to show for it but blurred recitations of what had once been.

Finally, in the summer of 1987, having tired of his despondency, I and his other friends began to establish a "distance," signaling him to shape up and get his life on track, and not to bother us until he did.

By fall, he was making efforts to do just that. But even as he did, the same childishness, the same fantasizing, the same abhorrence of routine, or holding a full time job, presented as barriers that for him were unsurmountable. In early September, I met him at the Tacoma National Championships, where we had a few minutes to chat before I left in the early afternoon. He had been goaded into coming. He had a major full contact win the prior year, and was told the opponent would be there looking for him. Squalls felt it a matter of honor to show...of course, the opponent did not, it was all a come on. He even borrowed the money to get in. In our final moments together, he wanted to thank me for all the support I had given, and told me he felt he was finally getting it together. He also said he was going to compete that day, since he was already there. I thought it gracious he would thank me for anything, since my message to him had certainly been painful.

I returned home in the evening, after teaching my own class, and at 9 p.m. received a phone call from his wife Sheila, from whom he had separated.

She was hysterical, unable to communicate over the phone, and all I could get out of her was "St. Joseph's Hospital..."

I went to the hospital, with my son, who had studied with Earl for nearly eight years, but had disassociated himself from him in recent months when the depression became so pronounced. We arrived at the emergency room, and were led by the medics, into the room where he lay. Off to the side, were two rubber bags, filling and emptying to the timed cadence of an adjacent mechanical unit.

Projecting from various orifices of Earl's body were tubes, with fluids moving to and fro, following some purpose that only the learned doctors knew. To my front, like an eye peering back toward myself and my son, stood the bouncing ball monitor, that could only have represented the beat of a pulsating heart. The monitor stood motionless. I looked at the body, which radiated the same light of nobility I had seen when I first met him, only now, but for the action of a life support system, he was gone. Studying the body more closely, I noted a trickle of blood from beneath the sheets, dripping to the floor, where a pool had accumulated, attesting to the efforts of those emergency room physicians who, sparing nothing, only minutes before had opened the dying man's chest in attempts to revive the already petrifying heart.

It had all happened too fast! My hand touched his still warm foot, and I held it, whispering, "Jesus!" In a few minutes, we returned again to the same room, with Sheila, and stood as the physicians were about to unplug the life sustaining machines. Because of my heritage, I wished to say final words to the spirit which I believed to be hovering over the body these final few seconds. We wished him farewell, and told him that we loved him, and even while saying so, regretted never having told him while he lived.

He died fighting in the tournament.

The cause of death was given as Cardiac Arrest, proximately caused by blunt impact to the neck. To witnesses, it remains a mystery. Certainly, there are many factors. There was the chronic asthma, reports of undiagnosed diabetes, the accumulation of foreign substances in the bloodstream, and the diet of poverty which had left his body in a state of malnutrition. There were also rumors of vendetta, of retribution for past martial successes, of vengeance, of drug wars, secret death techniques...and who knows what else. His final few moments were preserved on video tape, initially reported as missing, then found, which, after close scrutiny by several experts, produced no certifiable conclusions. Proponents of the "death strike" theory would point to several "death strikes" visible in the video. Others read the same techniques as attacks which were successfully defended

At Squall's tournaments, full safety protection was mandatory, making the circumstances of his death all the more ironic.

against, and had missed their targets. The questions remain unanswered. And the mystery lingers.

Within days, the father he had never once mentioned me had arrived to escort the body home. There was a public viewing, and he was laid to rest wearing his Gi. There were no flowers, and those who attended the funeral were shocked and in confusion.

Karate means "empty hands." It signifies the essence of selfhood. One comes onto the earth with empty hands, and leaves with the same. Earl called his system of training the "Inner Core." If the inner core was developed properly, nothing else was needed. He left with nothing, wearing but his uniform, in an otherwise empty box. It was a sad, but appropriate end to his saga.

He was 32 years old.

Even today, as I recount the story of Master Earl Squalls, a deep sense of sorrow fills my heart. He is the Master that no one will remember, except maybe those who read this account. He represented the child in all of us, and along with that, the part of us which is hopelessly irresponsible. He was endowed with a talent that could come only from the hand of God, and those of us who recall him at his prime, will cherish the memories, and regret that his dire circumstances prevented anything but the most basic photographs to serve as proof of his abilities. More than anything, what is missing is the good that only he had given to the world. Gone are the children's tournaments, the smiling faces, and the "Sensei Sez." When those of us who knew him remember, we'll miss the inspiration he gave us to do the things our practical natures would otherwise have frowned upon. Without him, the freedom to play is gone, and the world seems so...adult.

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