Karate Pastor Gets His Kicks Teaching Kids

Eyes following their master, the youngsters lash out at the air, striking menacing karate poses. They wear no gis (martial-arts suits), and a concrete slab in Pamela Park in Monrovia must serve as a mat, but they are enjoying themselves.

When the evening wanes, the students, arms tight at their sides, bow to their teacher.

Donnie Williams, who a decade ago was rated one of the best karate fighters in the world, dismisses the class and breaks into a winning grin.

Karate may seem an unorthodox introduction to God, but Williams, 42, has found that it can draw idle youths away from the streets and into church.

Six years ago, Williams founded the nondenominational 300-member Family Church in Monrovia, of which he is pastor. This summer he started the Christian Karate Assn., and about 20 young people, ages 5 to 19, have joined.

“I’m reaching for people that really want to succeed,” said Williams, who charges on the basis of a child’s ability to pay. He describes his lessons as community service.

‘Good Role Model’

“Community service is coming out of your homes and talking to these people and being a good role model,” he said.

Williams has lived in Monrovia since 1958. His home and the church stand on Monrovista Avenue, where police are summoned several times a week to investigate family feuds, drug activity or shootings, according to Lt. Mike Delaney of the Monrovia Police Department. Bars guard the windows of the rented church building.

But “most of the (drug) dealing occurs at the other end of his street,” a Monrovia narcotics detective said. “Maybe it’s because if they hang around his house, Donnie would come out and give them a lot of static, which he should.”

In April, when the pastor led about 100 members of his congregation on an anti-drug march down the street, “some of the drug dealers took off their hats out of respect,” said David Milligan, 23, a deacon in the church.

Milligan said he had been struggling with two jobs, sleeping in his car and feeling “very insecure and very helpless” when a friend took him to the Family Church five years ago. Now a supermarket manager with a home and a mid-level purple belt in karate, he attributes his confidence and stability to Williams’ guidance.

“The focal point of the karate is Christ,” said Milligan, who once thought becoming a Christian would make him a sissy. “When we meditate or compete, we glorify God.”

But Williams said that although he came from a religious background, religion had little to do with his initial interest in the martial arts. It was anger fueled by racism that led him to karate.

The son of a Pentecostal evangelist mother who enforced an 8 p.m. curfew and took him to church five nights a week, Williams was cool toward religion as a child in Savannah, Ga.

“I hated it. Who wants to be a Christian at 13?” he asked. “I believed strictly in myself.”

Williams said a severe beating by five white youths persuaded him to learn to fight when he was in his late teens.

After joining the Army, Williams studied karate at a private school in the Texas town where he was stationed.

There, he said, he encountered racism again.

“No one gave me any breaks,” Williams said, but he added that “after one and a half years (of unrelenting combat at the school), you become very good.” He said he practiced karate five hours a day.

The racism angered him, he said, “but it helped me gain the goal I had--to be a champion.”

After leaving the Army, Williams continued to train and compete in tournaments.

In 1969, he co-founded the Black Karate Federation in Los Angeles to encourage blacks to compete on the then nearly all-white karate tournament circuit.

Williams broke into the movie business when casting agents approached the Black Karate Federation and hired Williams for a bit part in the 1972 Bruce Lee film “Enter the Dragon.” He continued to promote his talents in the entertainment world and has appeared in several films and choreographed fight scenes for actors, including Clint Eastwood in “The Enforcer” and “The Gauntlet.”

In 1977, because of a dare, Williams reached the pinnacle of his fighting career, the overall title at the 1977 International Karate Championships in Long Beach. He was the first black to attain that honor.

Williams, a referee at the tournament, was challenged by an instructor on a call he had made. Annoyed, Williams entered himself into the competition to fight the man, borrowing a friend’s gi because he didn’t have one. He considers it a miracle that he won, having retired from competition.

Williams said he promised to serve God the rest of his life if he won, but promptly forgot the pledge after the tournament.

“When you get an income of $4,000 a month (from demonstrations and film appearances), who needs God?” laughed Williams. “You need a checking account and a good accountant.”

But a few years later he felt his calling. “I could do only so much for myself. . . . All of a sudden I had a great desire to serve Him and make my promise good.”

Digging up his Bible, Williams enrolled in a correspondance course with the nondenominational International Gospel Assn. in Missouri.

‘All Is Not Lost’

“I use the martial arts today to identify myself as a Christian, as a testimony of my life for the Lord so people can see that all is not lost. . . . You can live right.”

Williams also has his hand in law enforcement as well, training county park police officers in self-defense and serving as a reserve officer.

His students also include Monrovia police officers, such as Cpl. Richard Wagnon, who said: “Everyone in the department knows him.”

Wagnon first found the minister directing traffic at the scene of an accident near his church. After some encouragement from Williams, Wagnon began training with him, acquiring a black belt within 27 months.

Evidence of Success

But Williams’ main goal is to reach out to youths so that they stay out of trouble. He points to congregation members as evidence of his success.

Williams said he has helped at least 300 youths in the Monrovia area earn black belts.

As a teen-ager, the Rev. Francis Lollis, now 33 and a pastor at another church, “used to peek through the gym door to watch” Williams give karate demonstrations at Duarte High School in the 1960s. Describing Williams as “a good father image,” Lollis said he swept the floor and cleaned the windows of Williams’ karate studio for free lessons.

Student Steve Berry, a brown-belt champion in several states, said he was a “terrible guy,” affiliated with gangs in Monrovia and Duarte. The 21-year-old truck driver remembers raking in $2,000 on a good day selling drugs before training with the pastor.

Today he attends Bible college and is a minister in Williams’ church.

“In the streets they think highly of (Williams),” Berry said. “It’s just a matter of time before they change. . . . If you have no examples, you have nothing to follow.”