Tuesday, April 20, 2010
This 2 1/2 months late, unfortunately, but I found this info on the web this evening and wanted to acknowledge that Grand Master Raymond Arndt of the American Kang Duk Won Assocation based in Florida died on January 30, 2010. While the news was not unexpected - I know he had been very ill for a long time - I have no doubt that this has been a difficult time for all the students and instructors whose lives he had a positive impact on.
Grand Master Raymond Arndt (photo courtesy of AKDWA)
Grand Master Arndt was the head of first martial arts school I studied under, way back in 1982 (at that point we knew it as simply Kang Duk Won... I believe it wasn't until a few years later that the official name was changed to the American Kang Duk Won Assocation to distinguish it from Kang Duk Won in Korea.) I definitely remember taking part in a class taught by him at one of the summer karate camps, and came away very impressed by the man in many ways. Unfortunately by the time I was most active in AKDWA he had chosen to play a diminished role in the northeastern branch of the school, and I don't believe I had the opportunity to see him again before the Rochester/Utica/Albany area classes broke away from AKDWA in 1995 to form the American Martial Arts Institute. He did resume contact with the head of AMAI several years ago, and during my last year or two with that school I heard quite a bit about their visits and conversations. To his credit, the head of AMAI was instrumental in Grand Master Arndt being inducted in 2007 into the Action Martial Arts Hall of Fame as a Platinum Pioneer in recognition of his over 50 years of martial arts leadership and dedication. While I haven't always been all that impressed by Action Martial Arts, in this case it seemed to me to be recognition that was very well deserved.
more to come...
JMH
