Aikido of Atlanta 1973-1978

After 35 years of practice, I would like to say that I feel like all my teachers and friends I have studied with are here in my hands and body as I do a technique. It is a good feeling.

As can be seen in these photographs, there were a good many hippies in our classes in the 1970's. I was the token South Georgia redneck. We were a fuzzy bunch - stylish beards, long hair, pony tails, and Afros. As for myself, I was several fashions out of date, going with some very nice-looking Elvis Presley sideburns.

Rodney Grantham founded the Aikido Center of Atlanta around 1966. The first school, or the one I joined in 1972, was down the obligatory glass-strewn back alley, in the Buckhead district of Atlanta. Rodney shared the dojo with heavy-weight judoka. There was no air-conditioning, other than a big fan and open windows, so the dojo had a nice gym smell to it. It was great to work out when the rain was pouring down outside the open windows. The pipes in the ceiling sometimes dripped water on the matt, and the judo boys had a wooly stuffed wild boarÕs head with ferocious tusks on the wall.

We did have a little bleacher section and dressing rooms for the fellows and girls, if any. Rolling on the mats was like rolling on a soft cloud in the sky! My understanding was that the concrete floor was damp, so Rod put the mats up on a low plywood platform. The soft mat, covered with canvas, on a plywood platform was very comfortable for ukemi.

Around 1974, Rodney moved the dojo out in my neighborhood in the Chamblee district of Atlanta, on a much nicer back alley. The dojo was very nice, with freshly painted walls, and was packed to start with. I guess people just liked the old alley better, because attendance fell off, until Rodney moved back to the old alley with the broken glass and boar's head after I moved to Virginia in 1979.

George Kennedy is now Sensei of the Aikido Center of Atlanta. George and his wife at that time, Jeannie, were of the hippie persuasion. We were, and always will be, the best of friends, hippie and redneck. George went on to be a professor at Georgia State University and I, of course, was a hydraulic engineer with the U. S. Geological Survey and later with the South Carolina Department of Transportation. In the early days, George and Jeannie Kennedy were free spirits. While I was a stick-in-the-mud, plodding 8-6 kind of guy, George would work 6 months while Jeannie did art, and then she would work 6 months while George did art. I didn't have the guts to do what I wanted to like that. I asked George to help me survey creeks and streams for a flood study in the deathly cold winter of about 1975. We nearly froze during the days, and would throw each other around on Tuesday and Thursday nights. I still remember the water freezing on George's waders when he came out of the water. He and I still treasure those hard times together.

These following photos are of a 1973 seminar Sensei Yamada taught a the old Aikido Center of Atlanta.

Morris Hall, Harris, Fred Weinberg and his brother.