Silver Hair, Brown Belt : Karate ‘Gave Me a Purpose in Life,’ Says Mary Stermer, 75

The barefoot karate student in white jacket and pants stood on the polished wooden floor facing the master, a formidably built man with a black beard.

“Ichi! Ni! San!” shouted the master in Japanese. One, two, three.

The student responded with choppy punches, kicks and with graceful, balletic moves.

“Don’t go too fast, you’ll make mistakes,” advised the master, who then suggested a break.

“I don’t need a rest,” responded the student.

“Just tell me when you’re ready to go,” said the master.

“I’m ready.”

The student, who already holds a prestigious brown belt in karate, is on a virtual mission to earn a black belt--reserved for the elite practitioners of the martial art--and does not believe in resting very much. Never has. Not in all her 75 years.

Mary Stermer has always led an exceptionally full and busy life, but when it all fell apart from depression not long ago, karate helped her put it back together. The martial art helped her to center herself, to concentrate and give her something to look forward to.

The medical treatment that she received probably did not hurt either, but Stermer emphasizes activity rather than medicine.

“I’m not one who likes to take every kind of dope that’s out there,” she said.

Stermer is not unique in her distrust of certain drugs. Although medications are effective in treating depression, elderly people are frequently uneasy about mood-altering drugs, gerontologists say. The elderly often neglect to seek treatment for dangerous but treatable depression because they believe that mental illness is shameful, experts say.

“To some extent, people of that generation are not as psychologically minded,” said UCLA geriatric psychiatrist Andrew Leuchter. “They don’t tend to think of discomfort in emotional terms. There’s more of a stigma attached to mental illness among the elderly.”

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Sometimes, gerontologists say, physicians fail to treat elderly patients for depression because they inaccurately believe that older people are naturally depressed. Actually, studies show that the elderly are less likely to be stricken by major depression than younger people, but are more prone to suffer from minor depression.

Stermer’s depression was so deep and was such a contrast to her usual outlook on life that she could not ignore it.

“I don’t believe in fooling around,” she said. “I believe in working.”

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Mary Francis Stewart Stermer has been working since childhood.

The daughter of an itinerant coal miner, Stermer lived in 41 states as a child and attended hundreds of schools. She dropped out of high school to work as a housekeeper shortly after the family came to Los Angeles in 1932.

At 18, she married her husband of 51 years, Donald Leroy Stermer: “The sweetest, most wonderful person who ever lived.” The wedding ceremony was performed by colorful evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson whose Angelus Temple in Echo Park the couple attended.

Donald Stermer worked as a silver plater and school maintenance man and Mary worked as a bank teller and started a catering business. The couple adopted one of Mary’s infant nieces and, in 1959, adopted a Korean orphan. The niece performed regularly on television as a child singer and musician. A drama written by Mary based on the tribulations of the Korean child was broadcast nationally on the Loretta Young television show.

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The catering business thrived and Mary handled such jobs as a three-day New Year’s party in Beverly Hills attended by such celebrities as the Rolling Stones and Mama Cass Elliot of the Mamas and the Papas.

But Mary wasn’t star-struck. She stayed incredibly busy with down-to-earth activities. She went to night school and graduated from Alhambra High School along with her oldest daughter in 1962. She took foster children into her nine-room house. She jogged. She learned to play golf. She performed clown acts for nursing home patients. She invited newly arrived Cuban refugees to Thanksgiving dinner. She won 17 prizes for cakes at fairs.

“Everything I’ve learned, I’ve learned from scratch,” she said. “From looking, watching.”

At age 55, Stermer happened to be passing by a karate studio then operated by the International Karate Assn. in Alhambra. Fascinated by the fast action, she stopped to watch the lesson.

“I don’t like anything that moves slow,” she said. “Like bridge.”

Stermer noticed that several karate students were girls.

“I said, ‘Can anybody do this?’ ”

Five years later, Stermer--under the tutelage of karate master Tom Serrano--earned a brown belt, a step below the black belt.

But Stermer drifted away from karate. When she was 64, her husband, Donald, became ill with heart trouble. At about the same time, she was asked to take custody of three grandchildren.

In 1989, a half century after their marriage, Donald Stermer died. The children were grown. The house was big and empty. Mary Stermer fell into a deep depression. For nine months, she barely ate or left the house.

“All I did was lie in bed,” she said.

Stermer finally moved to a small condo and was treated by a psychiatrist who gave her antidepressants, but she is skeptical about the effectiveness of the doctor and the pills. Instead, she gives credit for her recovery to karate--and to the Ms. Senior America of California Pageant.

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Stermer decided to stop taking medicine and return to karate so she could perform in the Ms. Senior America contest as a martial artist. She was again instructed by Serrano, this time at his studio in Pasadena.

“It gave me a purpose in life,” she said. “I’m doing it for me. I never did things for me. I always did things for someone else.”

Stermer receives the same type of tutoring that younger students receive, says Serrano, except that some potentially dangerous moves are avoided.

“There are certain things she can’t do,” he said. “I would never have her do jump kicks.”

He expects her to be ready for the black belt test next year.

“When she goes out for the black, she’ll have to earn it,” he said. “They don’t give it away.”

But he expects her to succeed: “She has this attribute of being hungry.”

After Stermer returned to karate, she trained hard for a year and in September entered the Ms. Senior America contest as planned. Serrano accompanied her to the event in Laguna Hills and she delighted the audience by throwing her instructor all over the stage.

She did not win the contest, but she won where it mattered to her. “I won in my heart,” she said, “because I accomplished something I wanted to do. I’ve been fine ever since.”