Meet the Professor

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I, Professor Frank DeGourville was born in January 2, 1956 in Siparia, Trinidad, West Indies. I grew up in a family of 7, six boys and one girl. Yes, we grew up in hard times, but yet our parents provided for us. Our parents made sure that we got a good education. My parents separated when I was 5 years of age.     

I was raised by my father and visited my mom occasionally. I remembered planting vegetables so we can cultivate and eat from our garden. We had plenty of fruit trees right in our backyard. Fruits and vegetables were plentiful. We ate fruits everyday right from our backyard. 

Growing up in Trinidad was fun; we walked around bare footed until we realized the purposes of shoes. Yes, our parents brought us shoes for school and also to play in, we choose to go bare footed when we played in the backyard, until one day while playing in the bushes in the backyard one of my older brothers was stung by a Scorpion, after then we all started wearing our shoes in the backyard. We did not have the luxury of having water in the house; we had to walk miles to get water in buckets to carry it home so we can cook with. 

At the early age of 12, and of my disciplinary upbringing, I took a liking to practicing karate and kungfu. I first saw a demonstration by Master Moses Powell in the late 60’s in my country in Trinidad. I attended a private college for boys at the age of 12 ( Saint Joseph College).  My family relocated to live with my mom in the USA in 1969, and at that age I had a true passion for learning Martial Arts. I was eager to learn from the best, so I went window shopping, so to speak, and sat through several Kungfu classes in Hartford Connecticut to get a feel for the Arts. 

I knew from that point in my life that I was going to study and practice Jiu Jitsu. I was so amazed that my classmates were so humble, mainly Terry Davis, a black belt at the time during school hours. I actually looked for and studied Terry Davis everyday to see his behavior. There was another guy whose his nic named was Tiao, he was a senior and a black belt at that time. He walked the hallways with such confidence and poise, I also wanted to be just like him. 

During my first promotion, I did not know what to expect, my teacher had black belts surround me and actually attacked me. I came out of that situation ok, but it left an impression that this was real, It was from that point in 1972 that I took my martial arts training very seriously. The fee at that time was $15.00 per month, it was expensive, but I was determined so I got a part-time job selling newspaper . I got up every morning at 4:30 delivered my newpapers and was ready for school everyday. I was actually making good money with my news paper route. 

In the spring of 1977, I finally reached my final destination, LOS ANGELES. I began my search for Master Steve Sanders. It was not difficult to locate him because everyone knew who he was and where his school was. The first time I visited his school I was so impressed by the way one of his student greeted me at the door. It was AL Harvey nic named “Hot Dog”, he had a clip board in his hands and asked me to sign in as a visitor. I asked him if I can talked to the teacher before I leave. I introduced myself and told him that I was interested in continuing my studies in the arts and that I was a student of Master Moses Powell’s system. 

Master Steve Sander immediately took me under his wings, he invited me to the Internationals that same year as his student and his personal guest. I got at the arena about one hour early just so I do not miss him. When he arrived he noticed me instantly, he escorted me in to the arena. That day after seeing all the top fighters in the world compete against each other was an eye opener for me. 

In the year 1978, was when I decided to team up with Sam Sherman and Charles Warren to open up our own school to include Jujitsu, TaeKwonDo and Kenpo under a universal system of Street Fighting. This was actually a revised art that was structured toward discipline and controll. We placed adds in every local newspaper to encourage martial artist of all races to participate in seven days per weeks training. We got about fifteen martial artist to commence training. During the first month of planning and intense training which included a lot of sparring, we started weeding out the not so serious minded ones. We made it down to about six finalist who wanted to be a part of our vision to be our first students to help us open our first school. 

Our first school was registered and opened in October 1978 located at 4211 S. Vermont Ave, Los Angeles 90037.