Black Belt Hall of Fame
Bruce Lee
1974
Martial Artist of the Year
From the beginning of this year's balloting, it was obvious the legendary Jet Kune Do founder Bruce Lee was far and away the natural choice for the 1974 Martial Artist of the Year Award.
While it is customary to run a brief history and a list of accomplishments of the winning candidate, we felt in Lee's case it would be a futile exercise to try and encapsulate his achievements in the few lines allotted here.
Instead, we decided to print excerpts from a few of the hundreds of letters we've received from grief-stricken readers during the past year, in hopes of illustrating the impact he left on the martial arts world.
The one glaring similarity among all of the letters was the comment made over and over again about how each individual felt such a personal loss over Lee's death. One young woman from New Jersey wrote, "I knew so little about him and wanted to know so much. Suddenly, he is dead, and I just can't accept it. It's as if I knew him, and now I never will." Another writer, a man from Florida, wrote, " . . . I couldnt believe it. It was like losing a close friend and teacher." Still another man, a Californian, said, "Though I never met him, I knew him just the same. He was a friend of mine."
Some of the more tragic letters came from readers who refused to accept his death. So caught up were they in the charismatic mystique of the man and the martial artist, reality and reason left them. A 19-year-old boy from North Carolina angrily scrawled, "The magazine you put out about Bruce Lee is a lie. He is not dead. I will not believe it.... I have always wanted to be like him and someday I will. But I will not believe that he is dead unless you can give me proof, and I will find out if it takes me the rest of my life." A young man from Ohio found it equally hard to adjust to the news. " . . . In the back of my mind, I still think he might be living," he writes hopefully, "holding out someplace where he has privacy."
If the influence Lee exerted on the proliferation of the martial arts in this country can be accurately measured by the responses we've received, then the scope of his actions can only be described as staggering. An overwhelming percentage of the correspondence cites Lee's performances on television and in films as the overriding factor in the decision to take up the martial arts. A classic example is this excerpt from a New Jersey boy's letter: "Bruce Lee was, and always will be, the main reason why I must strive to reach perfection in the arts in my years to come.... "
Bruce Lee, a legend in his own lifetime, has gone on to even greater fame now that he's left us. And the impact of his teachings and his innovative mind will be with the martial arts world for a long time. But even more than that, the admiration and devotion he evoked from the public on the fringes of the arts may well have been his greatest gift to the arts.
Perhaps the last couple of lines from a letter written by a gentleman in Illinois sums it up best. "Goodbye Bruce," it reads simply. "We loved you and we'll miss you."
