The smart-alecky, mouthy middle child from Newark, N.J., suddenly became a wide-eyed youth full of wonder.

In an instant, karate grabbed his attention.

“I wasn’t really paying attention at first,” Jenkins recalls. “They were doing these moves, and I was thinking ‘I can do that.’ I was just sitting on the sidelines.”

He stopped making fun of the exercises when he saw something he’d never witnessed before. A group of trained students began doing kata forms. They were synchronized, with every movement practiced and performed perfectly.

Jenkins was mesmerized.

“I didn’t know these were prearranged routines that these students had already learned,” Jenkins said. “Suddenly, I saw this group of people all moving in unison as they’re standing in one line. No one was showing each one how to make that next step. It was as if they had one mind. I had never seen, en masse, a group of people, timing-wise, look the same direction and make the next move. I was like ‘How do they do that?’ My mouth stopped running, and my eyes and ears opened.”

Karate initially was a means to keep a 10-year old Jenkins out of trouble. It was a source for discipline and an activity that was an upgrade over loitering around the sometimes violent city streets.

He took to the sport so quickly that he began devouring the karate magazines and dreaming big. 

“I had the crazy thought and people laughed at it,” Jenkins said. “It was written in my junior high school yearbook. Some day, I wanted to be a world champion. Going to Japan or going to the world championships was as far away as the moon was, especially when you have no means of getting there.”

But Jenkins got there. His journey took him all over the world and to great heights in the sport. He’d eventually win four world championships between karate and ju-jitsu.

This fall, he’ll be inducted into the International Black Belt Hall of Fame in Pittsburgh.

It’s another milestone in an illustrious career in the martial arts, but Jenkins doesn’t care about the trophies and accolades. He’s had plenty of both. What matters most to Jenkins is the impact karate has had on his life and how he has used it to make a difference in the world around him.

“It’s not the trophies,” Jenkins said. “I’ve got tons of trophies. They’re all sitting in storage. To have a change of life for folks in a positive way, there’s no better legacy than that.”

His life transitioned from the martial arts, but the sport has never left him. Whether it be in politics, public speaking or teaching, it is still the root of much of who he is and what he’s still trying to accomplish.

“I’ve just been so blessed,” Jenkins said. “I’m so grateful to receive this honor. It really has less to do with me. I’m really accepting it for those people who brought me there. It was on their shoulders that I’m able to stand there and get this award.”

Safe from the streets

When he heard the news, Jenkins was saddened, yet also relieved.

He’d gone off to karate class one afternoon. When he returned and joined his friends on the street corner, he learned that one of them had been shot.

“While I was away for one hour for my karate class, one of my best friends had been shot in a gang confrontation,” Jenkins said. “Had I not had this activity as an outlet to take me away from that street corner, I would have been right there too.”

Jenkins was the middle child of three and admittedly the most difficult. For a single mother who had three or four jobs, there was a need to keep a young Jenkins out of trouble. Scouting and karate were two means to that end.

“She didn’t know anything about those two programs that she enrolled me in,” Jenkins said. “The only thing she heard was the magic word — discipline. She said ‘I don’t know what they do, but they’ve got to take my kid.'”

Jenkins took to both activities. Scouting introduced him to the outdoors and the wilderness. Karate fine-tuned his body and his mind. Both gave him something to do other than roam the streets of Newark.

“They gave me organized activities,” Jenkins said. “I realized that maybe these activities were keeping me alive. So I started getting better skills and learning more. There was always more to learn.”

Jenkins also noticed a difference. He was building strength, both physically and mentally. That only encouraged him to go farther.

“I was able to physically do things that I wasn’t able to do before because of this training,” Jenkins said. “I was thinking clearer now than I was before because of this training. I saw the personal benefits immediately.”

There was always the threat of some kind of confrontation on the streets. Jenkins said he was always a good runner and could avoid some situations, but he realized that other skills could work effectively as well.

“I had a better sense of how I gauged difficult situations and difficult people,” Jenkins said. “I no longer felt the need to run away. I felt confident enough with this that I’d learned that I could address things.”

Becoming a Bobcat

Jenkins knew little about Bates College or Maine. A program that supported kids with potential without financial means gave Jenkins a vision beyond Newark.

A football teammate from high school attended Bates, and a pair of alumni played a role in recruiting him. David and Nate Boone were  successful in law and business, respectively.

“It meant something to me that they took time out of their schedule to come sit and chat with me,” said Jenkins, who was also a standout football and track athlete in high school and college.

He met with Milt Lindholm, the dean of admissions at Bates, in New York City at David Boone’s law office on Fifth Avenue. Jenkins was told that Bates was interested in him and wanted to put together a package that could make the school a reality for him.

“I’m so glad he took that risk on me,” said Jenkins, who earned a psychology degree at Bates. “That was a gamble on their part, to some degree.”

While at Bates, he started getting more involved in the competitive side of karate. He took his lumps and suffered some losses but learned along the way. He also used those lessons to teach. He got involved in a local karate school, which later became John Jenkins Academy.

“I had a choice,” Jenkins said. “I could go back to Newark and get a job and try to work summers like any other college kid and make some money to get back to school. Or, I had some basic skills in the martial arts. So I said ‘I’ll start my own little business and work my way through school.’”

During that time, he didn’t just teach but received some of the most important training of his career. When he learned that Toyotaro Miyazaki was coming to Lewiston, he couldn’t have been more thrilled, even though he could barely believe that the man he’d read so much about in his karate magazines was coming to this city.

“I knew right away that five minutes with that guy would equal 1o hours of training with anybody else, and sure enough, it was true,” Jenkins said.

Keiko Ingerson, owner of Keiko’s Hair Care and a Japan native, was friends with Miyazaki. That opened the door to training with many well-known experts in the martial arts, including Tomosaburo Okano, Miyazaki’s instructor and Chuck Merriman, an establish karate coach in Connecticut. Jenkins went from relying on his physical abilities to learning the mental and strategic approach of the sport.

“I started training with some of the best America had which allowed me to develop,” Jenkins said. “You can have potential, but if you don’t have good coaching, it’s just potential. It became actual when I started getting good coaching.”

His training took him all over the United States as well as to Japan and China. He also rose to new heights in the sport, winning titles all around the world. He won in Maine, New England and even Japan. His first world title came in 1977. His success in the sport led to inductions into the Maine State Sports Hall of Fame, the Lewiston-Auburn Sports Hall of Fame and the World Martial Arts Hall of Fame.

But what he learned in the sport went well beyond competition. He continued teaching the sport while also transitioning into public speaking and public service.

“Timing, patience, focus, discipline and all those things that get discussed and you train from a physical standpoint in the martial arts, gets applied to the daily social interactions,” Jenkins said. “It’s the living arts.”

Political sparring

One of the disciplines that Jenkins teaches on occasion is fencing, both Olympic style and Kendo Japanese style. He says the first instinct for many is to want to break out the swords and start swinging.

That’s not how it works in the sport, and that’s not how it works in life. When Jenkins got involved in politics, he tried to bring an approach rooted in what he’d learned in the martial arts.

It served him well as mayor of both Lewiston and Auburn. He won a second term in Auburn as a write-in candidate and also served as a Maine state senator. Recently he was recognized by the Maine Legislature for his achievements.

“There are rules of engagement,” Jenkins said. “Just as we cross swords in fencing, people can sometimes cross words. How do you engage in a sensible way? There’s a way to engage and disengage. It’s really a strategy of life. How do you advocate yourself? How do you disagree without becoming disagreeable? How do you contend without being contentious? These are the underpinnings that add to the social fabric that we call community. These are the things I learned and live by and have served me well.”

Disagreements and varying opinions are commonplace in politics, but Jenkins says that mutual respect and understanding is a vital foundation to work through any issue. Jenkins tried to serve the public and govern based on what he learned in the martial arts.

“Those are the things that allowed me to be patient and look at the essence of the issues,” Jenkins said. “It’s not about you. It’s really about what’s driving this concern. If you don’t take it personally, you’re better able to get at the truth of the matter.”

He didn’t just take that message to city hall and the legislature. His public speaking opportunities led him to schools and businesses, where he promoted personal and professional development.

Jenkins recently spoke in Michigan for Interlochen Center for the Arts. He was invited there by someone who had heard him speak at Bridgton Academy decades ago.

“He told me that one of the things that happened to him as a young man at Bridgton Academy, while trying to figure out life, was when I came to sit with them and shared my philosophy,” Jenkins said. “That means something to me. When these kids grow up, and the fact that they remember something you shared with them 30 years prior, that was so significant to help them then, I’m living a blessed life.”

Jenkins has tried to focus more on the mental lessons of the martial arts. He’s currently doing classes of his program Tai-Chi Therapy — Jenkins Technique. He has some sessions scheduled at the Ramada Inn in Lewiston later this month. It’s a program that combine principles of meditative relaxation, yoga, tai-chi and brain/body research.

“I’m trying to make it more of a nationally-known program,” Jenkins said. “It’s helping people get centered and how do you make this body — this vehicle, it’s the only vehicle we have to get us through this journey. How do we make this last and operate at the highest level we can operate at? It’s not about working out, it’s about working in.”

He uses the example of a car running on unbalanced tires. A car doesn’t run as effectively that way. Sometimes people are similarly living out of sorts and not living efficiently.

“We move in an unbalanced way,” Jenkiins said. “That increases back problems and hip problems and other things. There’s a lot of wear and tear on this structure that’s unnecessary. I’ve been showing folks how to move more efficiently. That’s an offshoot of all these years of training.”

He says that his upcoming honor by the USA International Black Belt Hall of Fame is recognizing not only his past accomplishments but the work he’s doing now. Like his former martial arts teammate Billy Blanks, who took his training and utilized it in the Tae-Bo movement, Jenkins is using his martial arts skills in new ways and expanding the scope of the sport.

“They see I’m doing something unique beyond martial arts,” Jenkins said. “They’re saying that this has a big impact on people’s quality of life and that it’s another level of martial arts training.”

Standing on shoulders

When Jenkins makes an occasional trip back to Newark, he’ll see some old friends and see some still living their life on the same street corner that Jenkins escaped from years ago. Violence and drugs consumed many lives there.

“(I’m here) by the grace of God, because I lost so many of my friends on that street corner,” Jenkins said. “I wasn’t any smarter than those guys. I used to hang out on that street corner. Our paths diverged on that street corner in Newark.”

Jenkins admits he got a lot of help along the way. He was given opportunities and a guiding hand. Despite being hard-headed, he managed to listen and follow their vision.

It will be those people that he wants to honor with his USA International Black Belt Hall of Fame induction this fall.

“The profound thing is that so many people, unsung heroes, I wish they were here to receive that award,” Jenkins said. “It was their hand that guided me to where I am now. I am so grateful and I have an attitude of gratitude for those who carried me to this point.”

kmills@sunjournal.com