Karate Kids Learn Some Life Lessons : Veteran Instructor Shows His Young Students How to Strengthen Body and Mind

By PETER C. BENNETT

July 12, 1992 12 AM PT

SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

LA VERNE — The 5- and 6-year-old karate students were about to squash the garden spider that had wandered onto the floor at La Verne Community Center.

Sensei Jerome Walczak stopped them.

“Children,” Walczak counseled his young, white-clothed samurai. “We must respect all life.”

The students swept up the spider and threw it outside.

Respect for life is a lesson Walczak, 43, began learning as a hotheaded youth growing up in Norwalk. “I wasn’t a bad kid,” Walczak said. “I got good grades, but for some reason I always got in these dumb little fights.”

At 18, he almost came to blows with his uncle. A neighbor, an ex-Marine, pulled Walczak aside and showed him a few martial arts moves. Walczak enrolled at a karate studio the next day and began working his way up the karate hierarchy.

His mentors included Kiyoshi Yamazaki, who also trained Arnold Schwarzenegger. Walczak toured Japan with an American karate team in 1979, and earned a draw in a major competition with one of Japan’s ranking karate experts.

After a decade working as a stock clerk at a Ralphs Supermarket in Manhattan Beach, Walczak began teaching karate full time in the early 1980s. In his spare time, he does charcoal and pencil portraits of American Indian women.

Walczak teaches 500 students in 20 one-hour karate classes each week in recreation programs in La Verne, San Dimas, Glendora, Duarte, Cerritos and Bellflower.

Assisted by his wife, Beverly, an orange belt, and his daughter Tammy, 12, a blue belt, Walczak acts like a circus ringmaster in class.

He snaps a black foam pad over his thigh as he leads his students through a series of drills to strengthen mind and body. Even the 4-year-olds know to fall into line to practice jumping side thrusts, star tosses or nunchaku exercises.

Students are models of decorum in class. “I want them to become respectful people first,” said Walczak, who inspects each of his pupils’ hands and feet for cleanliness before the start of class. “They’ll get the coordination and the confidence and the self-esteem and the proficiency, but always respect first. It has to be.

“Give respect, get respect; give love, get love.”

Walczak estimates that as many as a quarter of his students come from single-parent homes. “Some kids must not get a lot of attention at home,” he said, “because I just pat someone on the head and I’ve got a friend for life.”

Some parents are wary at first because classes are conducted behind closed doors and opened to parents only once a month.

“That kind of bothered me at first,” said La Vona Goodson, whose 8-year-old son, Chris, learns karate at the dojo, or training hall, in Glendora. “But once I saw the whole program, and how he worked with the kids, I knew I had nothing to worry about.”

Parents seem amazed when they see their children perform in the monthly exhibitions. “You don’t think they’re learning that much until you see them actually go and do something,” said Diana Haney, whose children Robbie, 6, and Karen, 8, are in Walczak’s Glendora class. “And then you say: ‘You can do that? Wow!’ ”

Carlos Hernandez, 21, is a super-featherweight boxer who studied with Walczak for seven years in Bellflower.

“He helped me a lot with my speed,” said Hernandez, who has won his first two professional fights.

Walczak also helped change his attitude. “I used to be a pretty bad kid,” Hernandez said, “but he taught me how to be a more respectful person, how to treat other people better.”

Tony Yoakum, 25, is an Upland police officer who earned his dan , or black belt, under Walczak. “Things are unpredictable on the street, so I can’t really take up my karate stance,” he said. “But he helped condition my reflexes to be prepared for any situation.”

Students also develop improved confidence, concentration and coordination. “My son was always a good student, but he’s more focused and disciplined now,” Goodson said of Chris. “He takes a lot more pride in things that he does.”

Veronica Wilson of La Verne credits Walczak’s class with transforming her son Michael, 13.

“He was very reserved, but has really come out of that since he joined karate,” said Wilson, a brown belt who began taking lessons from Walczak after watching her son’s progress.

Barbara Lee of Cerritos, whose 10-year-old son, Brandon, has a mild form of cerebral palsy, says Walczak’s teaching is a form of physical and mental therapy.

“I think he sees stuff inside of Brandon that I don’t see,” she said. “It’s kind of like he just pulls things out of him.”