Terry Dobson (aikidoka)
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June 9, 1937
Terry Dobson | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Walter Norton Dobson III June 9, 1937 |
| Died | August 2, 1992 (aged 55) |
| Occupations | Aikido teacher and writer |
Terry Dobson birthname Walter Norton Dobson III[1] (1937–1992) was an American aikido pioneer, aikido teacher, and writer, who studied directly with the founder of aikido, Morihei Ueshiba, as one of the first, small handful of non-Japanese to do so.
Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts to a wealthy family on June 9, 1937 and moving to New York City in 1940, Dobson had a tumultuous childhood. Raised by his alcoholic mother and stepfather, he did not meet his real father, who had been disgraced after it was discovered that he forged his degree to get into Harvard Business School, until his late teens.
Terry went to the Buckley School and then Deerfield Academy, both prestigious private schools, where he excelled at American football. After receiving a scholarship to play at Franklin & Marshall, he quickly failed out and trained for a summer with the New York Football Giants under Vince Lombardi, the line coach at the time. He was a U.S. Marine doing helicopter maintenance during the Lebanon crisis of 1958, and attended New York University for a brief period. In 1959 he went to Japan to assist in rural development and teach English.
Discovering aikido
During a visit to Tokyo, Dobson witnessed a demonstration of what was then the little-known martial art aikido on an American military base in Yokohama. He instantly fell in love with the art and six months later entered the Aikikai Hombu Dojo as an uchi-deshi (live-in student), and trained as uchi-deshi until his marriage in 1964. He was one of only two non-Japanese to enjoy this privilege during that early era, the other being André Nocquet. He continued to train at the Hombu Dojo until Ueshiba's death in 1969.
Fellow American student Robert Frager recalled Dobson's presence at Aikikai Hombu Dojo in the early 1960s: "Terry Dobson was living in Tokyo, but I didn't meet him for months. He was running around trying to import posters or something."[2]
While training at Aikikai Hombu Dojo in Tokyo, Dobson served as Business Manager of Aikido, the Aikikai's first English-language newspaper, from its inaugural issue in January 1964.[3] The quarterly publication—a companion to the Japanese-language Aikido Shinbun—was launched to accompany the global spread of aikido, with Ueshiba Kisshomaru as Publisher, Tamura Nobuyoshi as Editorial Supervisor, and Sidney White as Editor. Dobson contributed under his given name, Walter N. Dobson.
Terry was one of the very few foreign students to serve as uke for founder Morihei Ueshiba: "There was also Terry Dobson, of course."[4]
Spreading Aikido in the U.S.
In 1970 Dobson returned to the U.S., where he gave seminars around the country and with Ken Nisson co-founded Bond Street Dojo in New York City and Vermont Aikido in Burlington, Vermont.[5][6] In 1979 he moved to San Francisco, California and became involved with Robert Bly and his Mythopoetic men's movement, still teaching aikido as a visiting sensei.
