Fred Degerberg is a man of his word. The day he first asked out his wife Katie, they exchanged phone numbers. Fred proposed the following Friday and they were married 20 days later. When Fred says he's going to do something, you'd better believe him. He is a man of great determination and vision. One night in 1980, Fred gathered a group of friends and students at his family home in Lakeview. The school where they all had been practicing martial arts had disbanded and the group no longer had a place to go. "We were a real hodge-podge of humanity," says Fred. "We had all the equipment we needed, we just had to figure out what our next steps would be." Then, a student of Fred's named Aaron Stahl spoke up. "He said, 'You know, the best martial arts school hasn't been built yet,'" Fred smiles and recalls. "I immediately envisioned something the size of the Sears Tower filled with floors and floors of studios, classrooms, social clubs—all dedicated to the martial arts." "If you haven't guessed," says his wife Katie, "he thinks big." The gauntlet had been thrown. There was no choice in Fred's mind other than to build the Degerberg Academy of Martial Arts.
Becoming a martial artist was accomplishment enough for a guy who started out as the proverbial 98-pound weakling. Growing up in Lakeview in the 1950s and 1960s (then known as New Town) wasn't easy. "The whole neighborhood was on a downslide," says Fred. "There were motorcycle gangs everywhere. I was a skinny little kid who got beat up a lot. Even the girls in the motorcycle gangs beat me up." But Fred was lucky to be surrounded by a strong, supportive family. His grandfather, Rocco, who lived downstairs in the two-flat Fred still owns was a professional boxer. "Rocco would do a boxing workout daily," he explains. "He fought in the 1915 era all around Chicago. In those days, every bar had fights—sometimes two or three in the same night. He would get something like $10 just for fighting and $15 if he won." Rocco taught Fred how to stand in a boxing ring, how to jab and hook. Their weekly ritual was to watch the "Gillette Cavalcade of Sports Friday Night Fights," hooting and hollering for their favorite contestants. Fred's dad, Fred Sr. was a wrestler and a hard-boiled Marine who fought in World War II. As Fred got older, he started wrestling with his dad. "We would train at home every day," describes Fred. "He loved to wrestle. We destroyed the house, broke kitchen tables, beds, you name it."
Fred soon developed an interest in bodybuilding. He converted a room in his basement into a weight room and began training with other guys from the neighborhood. They also started practicing martial arts among themselves. "We were small guys," recalls Fred. "I got to a point where I could start roughing up some of those bikers. Now, everyone knows martial arts. Back then no one knew them, so we had a huge leg up on other people if they picked a fight." Fred transformed himself from a kid who was picked on to a bouncer who kicked out the troublemakers. While in high school, he did security for a band called The Little Boy Blues. Later, that evolved into a job as a bouncer at the Aragon Ballroom. Fred's bald head and intimidating looks earned him a reputation as the tough guy you wanted to defend your band. He even went out to California for a while to do security for Warner Brothers.
Practicing the martial arts started Fred on a lifelong voyage of self-discovery. "I wanted to know, who am I? Why am I here?" explains Fred. He experimented with everything from yoga to self-hypnosis. He studied psychology at the University of Illinois. He ate all kinds of diets. He drank tonics and explored different medical practices. The more he learned, the more his eyes opened to the great diversity in the world and the great diversity in the martial arts. Traditionally, martial arts were specific to certain cultures. At the time Fred started practicing, the majority of people in the martial arts world believed in keeping their art pure and some a complete secret. People would study only Judo or Karate or Tae Kwon Do. The more Fred learned on his journey, the more he realized that there was no single way that was inherently better. "I realized that no one culture, no one country, no one style has a monopoly on the truth," Fred explains. "If I asked my grandfather, he told me that boxing was the best," says Fred. "If I asked my father, he said wrestling was the best. I knew that they both were right." In 1961, he was lucky enough to find an instructor that had a similar view. "Thirty years ago the Daily News did an article on my instructor, Robert Beal, and they referred to him as 'the Martial Arts Mixmaster,'" says Fred. "It was funny at the time, but it was the perfect description." Fred earned his Bushido Karate Black Belt, First Degree under Robert Beal.
As Fred continued training in the martial arts, he started to become known by other students who asked him for help. "It was an issue for me to take money for teaching," explains Fred. "One of my friends eventually talked me into giving lessons. He said, 'People really want you to do this for them.'" In the 1960s he joined with a group of martial arts enthusiasts, The Way of the White Tiger, a martial arts school on Clark Street just north of Belmont. "It evolved into a blend of the martial arts—Judo, JuJitsu, Karate, Kung Fu, boxing, etc.," recalls Fred. "We were the only ones we knew of who were doing this. We were ridiculed by the other martial artists around because they only believed in practicing one pure art. We didn't get respect for a long, long time. But we knew the simple truth: that we were developing an open, mixed system by taking the best of each system we studied." Fred and his associates may have had a hard time convincing others of the value of their philosophy, but there was one martial artist doing the same thing who was about to become very famous. When Fred first learned of Bruce Lee, he read about how Bruce came from Asia and had been trained in Kung Fu systems. But then he added his own expertise and elements of other disciplines like boxing to make up his own concept. "When I saw that someone else was integrating martial arts with other systems, I knew at that point I had to meet Bruce Lee," says Fred. He never did meet Bruce Lee before he died, but he trained under one of his students and close friends, Dan Inosanto, the world's foremost authority on Jeet Kune Do—the martial arts system developed by Bruce Lee.
The group that founded The Way of the White Tiger eventually disbanded in the early 1970s and Fred continued to give private lessons to people he knew in a rented room at the Hamlin Park Field House. Then that fateful night in 1980 happened and he set out to build a better martial arts school. Immediately following the meeting with his friends, he went out looking for a location for the school and rented a storefront on Diversey within a week. But the school still needed a more permanent home. "Then I ran into a guy whose family owned a dance studio on Lincoln Avenue," recalls Fred. "He told me about two places. One happened to be in the old Bertha Movie Theatre, which was built in the early 1900s but hadn't been a theatre since the late 1940s. When I walked in to see the place it was horrific! There were chunks of ceiling hanging down. The neighborhood was rough. And it was practically no money to rent. I thought, 'No one would want this but me.'" Fred took care of the clean-up and renovation with the help of his wife, Katie, and his friends. Everything had to be rebuilt. After buckets and buckets of white paint, the Degerberg Academy was ready to open. From its humble beginnings, the school gradually grew a little bit each year. In 1983, Fred and Katie added a second floor in the space the theatre seats once occupied. In 1985, they rented the storefront that was once the lobby of the Bertha Theatre and is now the main entrance to the school. "That was important for us," explains Katie. "It was a lot of money to rent, but we had street access and more visibility." Katie worked side-by-side with Fred, every step of the way in building the school, even while keeping her job as head nurse who ran the head and neck department at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. "We worked so much in those days that we actually slept there," says Katie. "We had a couple of fold-out beds in the office. The place was in such bad shape, we worked 20 hours a day."
When Fred built his academy, he took to heart the goal of building the best martial arts school that had ever existed. "My vision was to gather the best instructors, world champions, grandmasters of all different styles, and create a vessel where it's safe and all cultures are respected," says Fred. The academy is the perfect venue to carry on his devotion to exploring the expansive nature of the marital arts. Not only does the academy offer students the chance to learn the better-known marital arts of the Eastern cultures, it also teaches fighting styles of Europe, South America, North America and Africa. Fred started by calling on his friends. Many of the people who were present at the famous meeting at his home offered to help. "They told me that I would own the school, but they would help me and they did," recalls Fred. "They all had other jobs but taught for free. We were all doing this because we loved it." Fred and his instructors have brought literally hundreds of styles of martial arts to Chicago students at Degerberg Academy over the years. All of this research and knowledge has gone into developing what's now known as the "Degerberg Blend." The idea behind the Degerberg Blend is to teach the best of all arts in such a way that it becomes second nature for students to use the best method for handling each situation. "When you're in a fighting situation, the best method always changes depending on the environment," explains Fred. "How far away are you from your opponent? Are you fighting with weapons? Are you on the beach in swim attire or on the snow wearing a snowmobile suit?" All of Fred's efforts did not go unrecognized. Martial arts historian Emile Farkas has observed that Degerberg Academy is considered North America's first martial arts superschool.
Degerberg Academy welcomes students of all ages, from 3 year olds to 70+ year olds who are attracted to the martial arts for a variety of reasons. Some come for health reasons, to build confidence or strength, to learn meditation or focus, or to learn self-defense. Students range from beginners with no skills to those who already have a high level of skill. "When people join from other schools, we work with them to target what they need and what they want to learn," explains Fred. "If they've never done martial arts, we usually recommend that they go into the blend program." All new students take a 30 minute intro class where they learn the basics like how to bow properly, the student creed, and the 20 principles of the Degerberg Basics. Classes for the youngest students, the Turtles (3-6 years), are 30 minutes long. For the Karate Kids (6-12 years), classes are 45 minutes long. For teens (13-17) and adults (18 and up), they are one hour long. "When you become a member, you get one month to see if our school will fit with your lifestyle or that you will fit into our family," says Fred. "Members can always change over to different paths whenever they want. It's not a linear structure, but more organic in nature." "It's really set up like a university," explains Katie. Degerberg Academy teaches a huge variety of martial arts in addition to the Degerberg Blend. Just a few include Bando, Boxing, Capoeria, JiuJitsu, Kickboxing, Kung Fu, Tai Chi, and Yoga. There are even classes in weight training and to learn to do stunts.
Degerberg Academy students are extremely loyal. "We have members who have been with us since the beginning in 1980," says Fred. "Some of the members are people who I went to grammar school with." The academy has become so successful that Fred and Katie opened another location on Milwaukee Avenue in 2005. A lot of members start studying as children and stay with the school as adults. "Danny who works for us started classes at 10 years old," says Fred. "He stayed with us as a teenager and did the study program where he learned the business from the ground up. He's been our manager for more than 12 years now."
One night in 2006, Fred picked up the phone and it was an editor from Black Belt magazine. He thought that the magazine was calling about doing a story on his school. "I said, 'Oh, you're finally going to put me on the cover!" But it was much more than that—it was his great dream coming to fruition. "The reporter told me that Degerberg Academy had been voted Best Overall Martial Arts School in the world. Any martial artist who lived anywhere around the world was welcome to vote in this contest," explains Fred. "There were eight different categories that people voted on, plus the best overall." Fred and Katie were invited to the Martial Arts Super Show on June 6, 2006 at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas, where Degerberg Academy was presented with the award. Chuck Norris also received a Lifetime Achievement Award. "I was absolutely moved to tears," says Fred. "I couldn't believe it." Fred Degerberg set out to build the best martial arts school that hadn't been built yet—and he did, changing the lives of countless people who have experienced Degerberg Academy's signature approach.
Degerberg Academy of Martial Arts
4717 North Lincoln Avenue
Chicago, IL 60625
773.728.5300
www.degerberg.com
Call or visit for a complete class schedule.
|
