Bruce Lee: Sifu, Friend and Big Brother. Doug Palmer
Jesse, Bruce was “a kid with some neat skills we wanted to learn,” and when they hung out after training together “we were just a bunch of guys having a good time and Bruce was just one of those guys.”28 Bruce no doubt learned a lot from them too, especially how techniques needed to be adjusted to deal with larger opponents than he was used to dealing with. Jesse also helped Bruce with adjustment problems in his new environment, including difficulty in speaking in front of others.29 But it was clear that they greatly valued Bruce’s superior skills in the martial arts. Although it was a mutual voyage of discovery, Bruce was the one driving the boat.
Bruce’s diary, February 6, 1960 Courtesy of the Bruce Lee Family Archive
Although Jesse eventually went his own way, he had tremendous respect for Bruce and referred to himself throughout his life as Bruce’s “first student.” He also unabashedly said that Bruce was “far ahead” of him, and that he “couldn’t hit Bruce if [he] had tried.” He went on to say that since Bruce was his “teacher,” he wouldn’t have tried anyway.30 Jim DeMile and Bruce had a falling-out early on, but he always spoke highly of Bruce’s unparalleled ability as a fighter.31
When the number of students Bruce was training grew larger, they started practicing in playfields and various other outdoor locations. By March of 1961 there were ten students who chipped in ten dollars each per month to rent some space in Chinatown.32 By May, with many of the students out of work, they had to give up the space; Bruce stopped teaching temporarily and took a part-time job outside of Ruby Chow’s to tide him over financially.33 When I joined the class, the group practiced in LeRoy Garcia’s back yard.
One diary entry gives an interesting insight into Bruce’s personality in his early years in Seattle. In early 1960 an entry mentions a “small scrap” he had had, noting that he had “better learn more patience and practice self-defence a little more.”34
WHILE HE WAS still at Edison, some months before I joined the class, Bruce was challenged by a karate man who also had a black belt in judo. 35 According to Jesse, the karate man had a reputation for picking fights with tough opponents, and winning.
It is not clear when the match took place, but I would guess it was around November of 1960. Jesse describes the fight as taking place after a demo Bruce and his students put on at Yesler Terrace gym which, from a poster in Jesse’s book, was on October 28, 1960. The karate man challenged Bruce after the demo, but Bruce declined after checking with his students to make sure they would not think any less of him. The pretext for the challenge was that the karate man had taken umbrage over a comment Bruce made about soft styles being better than hard styles. Bruce was referring to gung fu styles, but apparently the karate man thought Bruce was talking about karate. Over the ensuing days, the fellow became more and more obnoxious at school. Eventually Bruce’s patience ran out, and Jesse arranged for them to meet for a no-holds-barred, bare-knuckled match. 36
Bruce and some of his earliest students, Seattle, circa 1960 Standing left to right: Pat Hooks, Bruce, Ed Hart, Jesse Glover Kneeling left to right: Taky Kimura, Charlie Woo, Leroy Porter Courtesy of the Bruce Lee Family Archive
The match took place on a YMCA handball court. Present on Bruce’s side were Jesse, who acted as referee and Bruce’s second, Ed Hart, who acted as the timekeeper, Howard Hall and LeRoy Garcia. On the karate man’s side was Masafusa Kimura, the judoka who gave the demo with Bruce at the Seattle U smoker, and another student from Japan. The fight was supposed to go three two-minute rounds, with the winner being the one who won two of the three rounds. A round was won by knocking a man down or out. If someone was unable to continue, he lost. The challenger changed into his karate gi, complete with black belt. Bruce kept his street clothes but took off his shirt, shoes and socks.
Bruce waited for the challenger to make the first move, a snap front kick. Bruce swept it aside and attacked with a flurry of straight punches which in Jesse’s words “tore his opponent apart.” He finished with a kick to the face as the challenger dropped. Jesse went on to say, “When the guy hit the floor he didn’t move for a long time and we thought he was dead.” It turned out that Bruce had cracked his opponent’s skull around his eye and down into his cheekbone.
The entire encounter lasted something like eleven seconds, but when the challenger came to and asked how long it had lasted, Ed Hart felt bad and told him it had taken twice as long.37
When Bruce blocked the first kick, Jesse saw that it had brushed Bruce’s tank top undershirt, and thought “if the guy’s leg was a little longer or the kick was a little quicker that the fight might have taken a different path.” Shortly after that, according to Jesse, Bruce changed his tactics and decided it was better to carry the attack to an opponent rather than wait and counter.
Bruce did not hold grudges, however. The karate man later wanted to learn from Bruce. He wanted Bruce to give him private instructions, but Bruce told him he would have to join the class like everyone else.38
ENDNOTES
4 The character for “Jun,” which may have been changed from a slightly different one when he was young, means to “shake, move or excite to action.” The character for “Fan” literally means “boundary” or “frontier,” but was also used as part of the transliteration of “San Francisco,” the “Fan” being similar in sound to “Fran.”
5 Linda Lee, The Bruce Lee Story, p. 27. (The book uses an incorrect romanization of the nickname, which Linda pointed out to me.)
6 The Lee family has described Grace’s heritage at various times as being part German or part German and English, as well as Chinese. See Bruce Lee: A Life by Matthew Polly, note to p. 13 citing brother Robert’s book, and Bruce Lee: Words of the Dragon (2017 edition), edited by John Little, note 8 on p. 69. I vaguely recollect being told by the family that she was part White Russian (the term used for the people who fled Russia in the wake of the Russian Revolution). When I asked Robert a few years ago, he confirmed that she was Eurasian but said he regretted that he had never inquired about the details. Her father, Ho Kom Tong, was raised as the son of a Dutch Jew named Charles Maurice Bosman, who emigrated to Hong Kong and became a successful entrepreneur, and a Chinese concubine from Shanghai. But there is some question as to whether Bosman was really Ho Kom Tong’s father. During an exit interview on the eve of his parent’s return to Hong Kong, in order to document Bruce as an American citizen and preserve his ability to re-enter the United States, his mother clearly stated that her mother was English and had no Chinese blood. But there is still some question about that, too. See Charles Russo’s book, Striking Distance: Bruce Lee and the Dawn of Martial Arts in America, p. 50. In Bruce Lee: A Life, Matthew Polly asserts that her father was indeed half Chinese and half Dutch-Jewish, and that her mother was 100% English. See pp. 13-14 and chapter notes thereto. But from the notes, it is clear that he is speculating. His notes also mention that the Dutch-Jewish Bosman family could be traced to Germany several generations before, which could explain the origin of the claim that Grace was part German.
7 Linda Lee, The Bruce Lee Story, p. 144; Polly, A Life, pp. 24,35.
8 See, e.g., Russo, Striking Distance, p. 53, and his notes thereto on p. 177, citing several sources; and in his introduction to Bruce’s Chinese Gung Fu: The Philosophical Art of Self-Defense, James Lee, on p. 1, states that Bruce started with Yip Man at age thirteen. Linda also confirms that Bruce always said he started with Yip man when he was thirteen. The only account I’ve seen claiming that Bruce didn’t start with Yip Man until he was fifteen is Matthew Polly, Bruce Lee: A Life, pp. 46 and 52-55. His argument appears to be mainly based on an article by Hawkins Cheung, a teenage pal of Bruce’s, who says that he met Bruce