By Ramon Dacawi
BONTOC
Mountain Province -- As he quietly did in previous years, former world karate
champion Julian Chees traveled home the other week for a personal mid-year
mission: reaching out to the sick and needy in Baguio and in his
native village of Maligcong in this capital town.
The
50-year old fifth-dan blackbelt, the only non-German by birth to have been
drafted into Deutchland’s national karate team, flew back to southern Germany
last Sunday to prime up anew as a teacher of the Gasshuku, the annual intensive
training of the Japan Karate Association spearheaded by master Hideo Ochi, the
JKA chief instructor for Europe.
As
representative of Shoshin Kinderhilfe, a small foundation he established with
his karate students seven years ago, Chees shelled out P47,025 for the rain
coats and school supplies of kindergarten kids in Maligcong and medicines for
six patients.
“Arrived
tired but safe after traveling midnight of Saturday `till this morning
(Monday),” he –mailed after his arrival in Germany. “Tulungan tayo piman ni
(Let’s help) 5 yrs. young Jeremiah Tuda, ni teacher Elenita Soriano 42, and a
father, Manuel Boaging 52”, he added after reading the on-line version of the
Baguio week-end papers.
Jeremiah,
a toddler from Tinoc, Ifugao, has been confined at the Baguio General
Hospital and Medical since last March for bacteria-infected injuries sustained
in a vehicular accident. Soriano, a teacher at the Rizal Elementary School, is
fighting cancer, while Boaging, father of three and a jeepney driver from
Bauko, Mt. Province, has been on regular twice-a-week hemodialysis treatment
for kidney failure since March last year.
While
here, Chees, who won for Germany the kata event in the 1993 World Shotokan
Championships, reached out to patients Freda Cheren, Jonalyn Gaston of Natonin,
Marcelino Erigio and Juilian Epok. He
also bankrolled the cost of an exerciser for a teener suffering from a
debilitating muscle disease and the maintenance medicines of a baby girl born
with a hole in her heart.
“I
guess squeezing in a little time to be home has always been worth it, simply
because of the opportunity to connect with those in need,” he said. “See you
before the end of the year,” he told local friends, among them his teacher,
fifth dan Edgar Kapawen Jr., head of the JKA-Orient based at the YMCA of
Baguio.
“I
owe what I am to sensei (teacher) Edgar and shihan (master) Kunio Sasaki,” he
said.
Sasaki,
the JKA’s permanent representative to the Philippines, introduced the shotokan
(traditional or knife-hand) style of the martial art here in the early 1960s.
Among his students were the late Arsenio Bawingan Jr., James Brett and Ambrose
Sagalla, lawyer Ric Pangan, Roger Garcia and Kapawen.
“Julian
is a real champion,” Sasaki, who is sparing in praising students, told JKA
adherents two years back when he and his former ward conducted e promotional
examinations for blackbelts in La Trinidad, Benguet three years ago.
Being
the smallest member of the German national team, Chees concentrated on
kata (formal exercises) which won him numerous international titles, He
ruled the event twice in both the England and Dutch and, under master Ochi, had
consistently reached the final in kata of the JKA world championships in
Japan.
His
personal mission here began in 2004, when he traveled to Banaue, Ifugao and
delivered P70,000 to help two families who lost two daughters in a landslide
rebuild their house.
Under
his stewardship, Kinderhilfe, the humanitarian arm of Shoshin, the karate
school he established in Germany, has so far extended over P2 million
support to indigent patients in the Cordillera.
“This
outreach is being made possible by the support of our Shoshin and JKA students,
teachers and their families who stand by the Shotokan code, Karate ne
sente nashi (Karate has no offense or There is no first strike in karate),” he
said.
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