my head as I perform a kata and realize that my stances could be deeper, or a certain self-defense series could be cleaner and sharper. I often hear his voice popping out of my mouth as I teach, and I still expect to see his watchful eye surveying the whole dojo at the International seminars. I appreciate Sensei Scanlon's invitation for me to share a few memories of this special Kokondo master, and have selected a few random, personal stories to tell you.

In the "old days," meaning the 1970's and through most of the 1980's, Master Longo was best known for how intimidating he seemed to so many people. He was very powerful and serious in class so most people figured that is what he was really like as a person. Maybe it was a little different for the people that knew him the longest, but overall, that was the general impression he gave. I personally never found that to be the case, and it was never how he acted toward me. I was one of the first "Jukido kids" to start training in karate formally at the Hombu dojo. I was very uncoordinated at first in karate and what I remember most was Mr. Longo's patience with me. My coordination and ability to execute techniques always seemed to lag behind my comprehension of what I was supposed to do. I think he appreciated my interest and hard work on the knowledge side, and did everything he could to help me get better technically. The night I learned Pinan 2 was shaping up to be a complete disaster when I got to the reverse uchi uke. A series of black belts gave up on trying to teach it to me until Master Longo turned the class over to someone else and spent time with me alone until I got it. It eventually became one of my favorite moves and kata.

Master Longo's sense of humor came out a lot more often in later years than it did early on. Many of these fun conversations took place after the karate class at Hombu once everyone else left. I would sometimes need to wait for a ride home and he always stayed until my parents arrived before leaving. I just loved talking with him and I appreciated that of all the jokes he told, he always laughed at his own the most. I do the same thing and maybe I got it from him. He often called me Mr. Quinn, his "Little Irish Friend," instead of Mr. Cohen. One time we were changing for class and he randomly decided to tell us that he used to sing German drinking songs when he was at Brown University. Two hours later, after an absolutely brutal summer karate class, he launched into one of them on the dojo floor, singing loudly and then laughing at himself. He always loved December when it was "Cha--nuka" time, which he delighted in intentionally mispronouncing every year.

There was another story from the spring of 1987 that captures another side of Master Longo. In those days, we would stay at the dojo from 3:30 until 9:30 every Monday and Wednesday. One day, I came into the dojo with a lot of homework, and after the Jukido class, I was struggling with an advanced algebra word problem. Shihan, Mr. Howard and I all thought we were close and then we proceeded to get it wrong with 3 different answers in a row. Shihan said he hoped Master Longo was coming to class that night and sure enough, 10 minutes later, the big green Ford station wagon drove into the lot, the door opened, and I knew I was going to be ok. He came over and looked at each of our notes to see how we were thinking about it, and said "TT--TT--TT." And then in very slow and deliberate steps, he walked all of us in the dojo through the process and showed us all exactly how to solve this type of problem. He also showed where we were each on the right track and where we made the fatal flaws. This method was also the way that he taught Kokondo karate.

I told a Master Longo story recently at Brandeis that I will share here. One student of mine looked very upset because the beginners were all doing a kata and they were following her, but when she did a move totally wrong, they all copied her. I just waited quietly for her to fix it, but she did not, so after a few minutes, I had to tell her. She was upset, so I told her about a time at Hombu when Shihan was teaching and about twenty brown and black belts were performing the kata Bassai. Master Longo strategically placed himself in the middle of the group (directly under the ceiling fan, always his favorite spot.) There is one move in the middle of Bassai that is the same in at least 3 different kata, but the following sequences are totally different. Well, after the mikazuki geri and empi, the whole class did the next move in Bassai--correctly. Master Longo was doing the wrong move because he accidentally switched to a different kata. We were all in stance and Shihan Arel just let us remain in that stance and look at each other. Mr. Longo looked around and was getting visibly annoyed that we were all wrong. Without talking, we were each debating whether to stick with the right move, or to switch kata to follow Mr. Longo, since he was the senior person on the floor. We all decided to stay put, and he looked madder and madder.  Suddenly his eyebrows cocked upwards, his head tilted, he looked around again at each person and just said "Oops." It was one of the funniest moments in all of my karate memories. We all laughed so hard, including Mr. Arel. 

Dan Cohen