I co-founded Phoenix Ninjutsu academy in 1992. Over the years I have taught hundreds of students in Phoenix and throughout Arizona. In 2000, we moved to the white mountains of Eastern Arizona. I am a general building contractor, I am also a NAUI scuba divemaster with countless dives. In the late eighties, I worked with Arizona scuba center in Phoenix. I am still married to my first wife for 25 years now, she is very tolerant, because I’m not easy to live with. A member of the International Bujinkan, I have been to Japan several times to train. In my youth I worked a variety of security and bouncer jobs. I had studied many other martial arts but was looking for an art that didn’t rely on beating someone into submission. I was living in Santa Cruz, CA, when I stumbled on Ninjutsu. At first, I thought it was just a joke but I went to watch a few classes and saw techniques that I’d never seen before in each session. After observing the third class, I signed up and even after all this time, still find that I learn something new in the art during trainings.
While living in Santa Cruz, I was also able to train with Philippino Escrima Master, Gilbert Tenio. Master Tenio was an absolute genius with knives and taught me that if a trained person has a knife, kill them from a distance. This was brought home to me during my very first black belt test in the Bujinkan. I was supposed to take a knife away from my much smaller friend Adam. We chalked the wooden blade so that you could see how you would have been cut. I looked like a chalkboard after a 3-hour geometry lecture. To this day, I’m not sure why Master Tenio liked Adam and I so much, but he would invite us to his family barbeques (which were amazing) and everybody there would show off their skills. It was great fun and great training.