Jesse Jones - Semper Fi

I knew Jesse Jones for more than half of my life. We met when I was 23 years old and just moved to San Diego. He refereed my matches, coached my competitors and 25 years later when my children were competing, he was refereeing their matches and running national championships in which they competed.

He was the tournament director for the first junior nationals Ronda ever won - she was 12 years old.

If you never knew Jesse, you missed out. He was a gentleman, a marine, a successful businessman and loved his family. He was the kind of guy you'd like on your team and as a next door neighbor.

We people use the term, "Pillar of the Community", I think of Jesse, particularly when it comes to the judo community. Here is just a little bit to give you an idea of the kind of man and judoka he was.

For the past 45 years, Jesse Jones has:

•  Served in various roles/officer for the Pacific Southwest Judo Association, a Yudanshakai under United States Judo Federation.
• Served as Director of Operations for United States Judo, Inc. (USA Judo) from 1992 to 1996.
• For the past twenty-five years he served as the commissioner of judo for the California State Games.  It is to be noted, that starting in 2015, the judo portion of the California States will be named the Jesse Jones Memorial Tournament.  In the words of Ms. Sandi Hill, Director of the California State Game “He is one person that we will never forget!”

He served in various roles in the following major judo events in the San Diego area:
1987 - Technical Official, International Military Sports Council (CISM)
            1987 – Technical Official, World Police-Fireman Games
            1990 – Tournament director for USA Judo Senior National
            2004 – Co-Tournament director of USA Judo Senior National
            Hosted several USJA Junior Nationals several times starting in 1987
1996 - Technical Officer at the 1996 Olympic Games, Atlanta
            1991 – Chief Scorer for the 1991 US Olympic Festival (Judo) held in Los Angeles, CA.

            Taught judo, under the club name of UNIDOS, at Naval Air Station, North Island, San Diego, CA; Southwestern College, Chula Vista, CA; Clairemont Boys Club, San Diego and many other locations.

            Participated in the 1968 All-Marine Judo Championships

Below, courtesy of Jerry Hays, are some words about his passing from judoka around the United States.

From Rene Zeelenberg, Ex USAF Judo Coach

Thanks for letting us know.  Many never met Jesse and I really don't know him that well but he was a fellow judoka.  I wish his family well, plz pass on our condolences from the Alamo Judo Family.

From Dr. Jack and Judy Hegenauer

  Thanks for notifying us about Jesse.  I’m really sorry about that.  Jesse was a fine man, and a tireless worker. 

From James Bregman, Bronze Medal in 1964 Olympic, Washington, DC

Sad to hear this news.  He made a major and prolonged contribution to American Judo.


From Judo Gregg

  He was the one and only one that helped me get my Dojo started.  He set up the business deal for me on my first purchase of tatami mats too.   Great guy.   A real Sensei.

From George Membrilla

First, we have lost a very important man in the sport of American Judo.
I send my condolence and prayers to his family.
May Jesse rest in peace.

From:  Robinson Family, Penascola, FL
++++++++++++++++++++++++

So sorry to hear of Jesse's passing. The ranks are thinning. God bless you all.

Last, but not least, from his fellow Marine

From E L Beshimentob and Maisha Mayfield (North Carolina)

Please convey our condolences directly to Jesse Jones' Family from The Mayfields. He is already missed.

Semper Fi

I Hate Fake People: Part 1

I just got back from a week in Kauai, so you'd think I'd be in a good mood - and I am, in general.

I didn't particularly want to go on vacation. I LIKE working all of the time, and I did work about half the time on vacation. As you can see, Kauai is beautiful. I went swimming two or three times a day, plus spent time with my husband and lovely youngest daughter, so that was good.

Still, there were a couple of things that irritated me a bit when I got home. One was for the umpteenth time someone telling me they wanted to help out Gompers Judo kids and then not following through and doing anything.

It's bad to stereotype, I know, but the fact is, I can't stand most people in the entertainment industry. It's their fucking JOB to pretend.

If it was 100% up to me, I wouldn't let them ever come to Gompers Middle School again. There have been so many film crews and photographers through there, all because Ronda started the program. So, now, when they want to do some show on her they show up and all say the same insincere bullshit,

"Oh, this is so great what you are doing here. We want to help."

And we never hear from them again.

That's probably why when Ronda came out to teach class a couple of months ago she refused to tell anyone in the media in advance and told people who found out about it they were NOT welcome. She said she wanted the kids to know she came for them and not a photo opp.

In five years, I will list the people who have helped out Gompers (and thank you a million)

• Sean Davila who lent us mats for THREE YEARS.
• Gary Butts who gave us mats and a crash pad.
• My sister and my mom who bought more mats and another crash pad.
• Jesse Moya from moya brand who gave the kids judo gis - and sent them a box of jackets and t-shirts for Christmas presents.
• Elizabeth, from Fight Chix who sent the kids t-shirts and personal notes of encouragement. 
• The wonderful people at Welcome Mat Judo (Kenny Brink and company), who gave us t-shirts, bought dinner and showed hospitality in a hundred other ways large and small when we went to Kansas City.
• Jay from Venice Judo (my old club) who bought cases of water for the kids.
• Aimee from Xyience who sent t-shirts and energy drinks
• The equally wonderful people at Guerreros Judo Club who invited us to their practices, tournaments and picnic.
• Two people who follow me on twitter who donated money to help send the kids to Kansas City (CustomNinja and NateSmith)
• Jose Gonzalez, Jimmy Sanchez, Will Beane and Ronda, all of whom taught for free for years.
• Dave Overbury at Ogden Judo who invited us to practices and tournaments at his club.

Here is the interesting thing - NONE of these people got anything out of this. They didn't get photo opportunities, footage they used in TV shows for which they made a lot of money, nothing. This has led me to the not particularly original conclusion that there are givers and takers in this world.

The reason I say I would not like any more media at the Gompers practices is because I don't think it's good for the kids to be exposed to that kind of bullshit. They have enough experiences already with people claiming to care and disappearing in three or six months when a better job opportunity comes through or the situation just becomes too difficult for them. We don't need to add any more to it.

At first, I thought it was a good thing that media came in and said something good about the school and the neighborhood for a change.

Now, it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. When I was younger, we used to call people from the universities and non-profits "poverty pimps". They would come into the neighborhood for a week or a month and then write some grant and get money to talk about their experiences or some bullshit.

Years ago, the Director of Special Education at Turtle Mountain told researchers they couldn't do studies on the reservation on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome any more. I asked her why and she said,

"What good are they? They come out here, do their studies, write up some papers so they can get tenure and what about us? We are no more ahead of where we were before but now we're depressed because we know how bad the problem is."

It reminds me of a comment Ronda made when someone asked her about her experiences in Hollywood,

"Everyone is really nice, but, who knows? They wouldn't be very good actors if they couldn't convincingly act like they like you."

That is not the life for me. One of the Ron-tourage (our family's name for the people who have now appeared out of the woodwork and claim to be "family" to Ronda) said to me,

"Dr. De Mars, I don't think you like me."

To which I replied,

"You're right. I don't."

My House is Dirty but my Conscience is Clean

Now that all of my kids are doing well, I get a lot of people asking me how I managed to have four children all turn out to be high-achieving, well-adjusted people.

There are a few answers to that. One is purely by the grace of God, and I mean that. None of my children are schizophrenic, autistic or mentally handicapped. Those are cards that just get dealt and it so happened that none of them got dealt to me.

So far, we've hit the genetic lottery in this family.

A second answer is that success depends on when you measure it. There have been times during their teenage years when each one of my children appeared to be on the high road to hell.

When people ask that question, though, I'm pretty sure they want a concrete answer regarding something I did.

Priorities. 

My house is dirtier than it used to be because my grandchildren live close now and they come over and mess things up. When all of my children lived at home, it was far worse.

I looked at it this way: there were a finite number of hours in the day. It was important to me to have a career where I could both support my family in the style to which I wanted to be accustomed and to "add another grain of sand to the scientific beach". So, I worked.

I believe strongly in the Greek value of a strong mind in a strong body, so I pushed all of my children to participate in sports of some kind and to do well academically. Occasionally, they pushed back.

Taking children to judo tournaments, soccer practice, pole vault practice, SAT study classes, summer science camp, track camp, marine biology camp - all of that took time and cost money.

Paying for private elementary school, high school and college all cost money, which meant more work.

Driving kids to the school, the library, the beach, hiking trails in the mountains, friends' houses where they were (supposedly) studying, bassoon lessons, piano lessons, dance lessons, swim lessons, drum lessons, gymnastics lessons, judo lessons - all took time and most of it cost money.

Having cats, dogs, birds, frogs, guinea pigs and chinchillas takes time, money and effort.

I'm not sure how much of that my kids would remember if  they thought about their childhoods, because they took it all for granted.

"Oh, I just went to marine biology camp once."

"I didn't go to the most expensive private high school in Los Angeles."

Plenty of it - ballet lessons, mommy and me swim lessons, library story hour - happened when they were probably too young to remember.

The rest of it they took for granted because, hey, it was the only life they knew.

If there was something I did right (and so did my late husband, and my current husband), it was to put a priority on our children over stuff.

We still live in a townhouse in Santa Monica. We never moved to a big house in Malibu or bought a sports car. Instead, we put our money into private schools and lessons of every  type. Our children have traveled the world as a member of the Olympic team, an exchange student and just a very spoiled teenager. The one who did not travel very much ended up going to graduate school, so she also cost us quite a bit. When it came to decisions, we invested in our children's futures, not just our money but also our time.

So, if you came to my house when they were young, you probably thought it was a disaster. We did have a housekeeper, but it was an uphill battle for her with six of us running in, out and around the town. For years, we expected her to open the door on Monday morning, see the havoc that had been wreaked over the weekend and say, "Fuck it! I quit!" 

Fortunately, she never did.

Some people think that having a clean house is a matter of discipline. You make the children do the dishes, clean their rooms, sweep the kitchen - everyone has chores.

I had a different view. Everyone had responsibilities and theirs was to excel academically and get enough exercise to be healthy.

Jim Pedro, Sr. once said to me,

"I bet if you didn't go walking on the beach so often you'd have time to clean your house."

Exactly.

I've decided to look my age

Sometimes,  I watch these TV shows where I get interviewed and everyone else has had "work done". Their hair is dyed, their chins  -or  whatever - have been nipped and tucked by plastic surgeons. They are all made up.

Here is how my day starts whenever I am being filmed for anything:

1. I take a shower and brush my teeth.
2. I put on clothes that fit.
3. If I remember, I brush my hair.
4. I drink several cups of coffee.
5. I sit down in my office and start working.
6. People I have forgotten about show up at my door with lights, cameras, sound equipment.

I don't own any make up and I don't get my hair done all that often because I am usually too busy traveling to parts far and yonder demonstrating the educational games my company makes.  In fact, I told Ronda yesterday that I'm not doing any more of these interviews because it takes time away from my work and it's not as if she needs the help with publicity.

Briefly, I considered whether I should get make-up, a hair stylist. I found this picture recently of my grandmother. She didn't try to look like anything but she was. An old woman. There is nothing wrong with being who you are.

So, I decided that it is okay to be 55, almost 56, and look like it. There are some people who want to be known for the looks. I want to be known for my work.

=== Shameless commercial plug ===

Here are some examples by the way, the book on matwork I wrote with Jim Pedro, Sr. , Winning on the Ground.

Spirit Lake: The Game - an adventure game that teaches math and history. You can buy it for yourself or donate a copy to a student or school.

Why I'm Not Allowed to Be a UFC Commentator

When Ronda fought Sara McMann, my friend, Tina came to watch. Tina happens to be blind and the very nice security people felt so sorry for her having to listen to me give the play by play that they came up and offered to hook her up to a microphone to listen to Joe Rogan.

At the most recent fight, this was the discussion between Maria and I as we watched the fight:

Me: Why did they stop it and give the other guy a chance to rest?

 Random Guy next to us: Because his opponent hit him in the balls.

Me: That can't be legal, can it? Don't they get a penalty or something?

Random Guy: Not on the first one.

Maria: That can't be right. I don't believe everyone gets one free shot at the balls. Because, if that was the case, every fighter would take his one gratuitous ball shot. In every fight, it would start out with each fighter kneeing the other one in the balls, and once that was over they would start from there.

Random Guy: Well, if the referee thinks it's intentional, he can get a penalty on the first one.

Me: How do they know it's intentional? Is that when the fighter says, "Hey, ref, look at this- " and then, whammo, kicks the guy right in the nuts?

At this point, security came and chased away Random Guy because he was actually sitting in the wrong seat and some baseball player named Alex Rodriguez was actually supposed to be sitting there. I found this out only because I asked Maria why people kept coming up and asking the guy next to me to take pictures with them. I had heard of him. He was much larger in real life than I had expected, and also very quiet so I do not know his opinions on people getting kicked in the balls in MMA but I am just going to assume that he is against it.

And this is why they do not allow me to be a sports commentator.

Family, Friends and Acquaintances

(Here is how busy it's been - I wrote this on the ride back from Las Vegas and just got around to posting it.)

Been a busy week or two and just had a bit of time to blog sitting in traffic on the way back from Las Vegas. (Don’t worry, I’m not driving. No laws were broken in the making of this blog.)

Between Jenn getting married and Ronda’s fight, it has been a lot of time with family and friends.  Here is one of my pet peeves – few things irritate me more than when people say,

“Oh, your daughter is just like family to me.”

Funny coincidence here, they only say this about my daughter who is getting rich and famous, not my other equally wonderful daughters. Oh, and by the way,  Ronda had a lot less “family” when she was working as a bartender.

As the official word-definer of this blog, let me tell you what family means:

These are the people who are around your whole life. You don’t always have to like them, but you have to love them. Relationships with your family are a two-way street. Sometimes you make sacrifices for them and sometimes they do things for you.

For example, when Jenn finished elementary school, she was accepted at two high schools, one much more expensive than the other. I told her that between Maria at NYU, Julia’s nanny and Ronda’s travel for competition, there was not a lot of spare money. If she chose Marymount, we wouldn’t be having a lot of trips to Disneyland, dinners out or vacations for the next four years. Jenn said she did not want to go that badly. (Of course, for the next ten years she brought up how it was all my fault – until she got her masters from USC at 24 and decided perhaps she was not so academically stunted after all.)

If Ronda had been an only child, I could have traveled around the world with her to her judo camps and competitions, but because I had three other children to support by running a business, that was not feasible and she ended up moving to Boston at 16.

Shared sacrifice. People in your family are with you through good times and bad. Sometimes you have to give up what you want to help them and other times it’s their turn.

These people who popped up in the past couple of years who are “oh so willing to help” – what kind of help are they, picking up her tickets for some premiere so they can all go hang out and get their pictures taken?

It was the same thing when Ronda was in judo. So many people told my husband, “She’s just like a daughter to me,” that he asked me if I thought any of them would be willing to pay the insurance bill.

A big part of being family is a shared history.  People who claim to be family say, “I would do anything for your daughter.” People who aren’t family don’t say what they would do because they already have done.

While it is true that family will love you no matter what, it is also true that your family are the people who will tell you that you are an unmitigated ass when the situation warrants. (For the record, none of my children are currently behaving like an ass, this is just noted for past -  and future –reference.)

As I said, that whole claiming to be family thing really pisses me off. As Shakespeare said, “Methinks the lady doth protest too much.”

Or, as I say, “I’ll bet Wayne Gretzky doesn’t go around telling people he’s a good hockey player.”

Another part of a family is that you are always on the same side. Jim Pedro, Sr. used to tell me that he would back whoever was right, even if it was against his own son and I would tell him that I knew that I would not. No matter what one of my children did, I would side with them.

It’s funny because the girls used to joke that I was so biased that if they punched someone in the face I would say,

“The nerve of them, hurting your hand with their face.”

Last night, Ronda was in a fight where she punched Alexis Davis so hard so many times that she busted up her hand and needed nine stitches in it. When the doctors were checking it, Maria and I were both upset said,

“That girl hurt Ronda’s hand, let’s go get her and beat her up.”

Maria wisely pointed out, though, that Ronda already had (and Alexis actually seems to be a very nice person).

Who Wants to Be a World Champion?

Since everyone and their brother was talking about Ronda’s fight this weekend, I thought I’d talk about something else.

Driving back from Las Vegas, we got to talking about athletes who take steroids and Eric, my son-in-law, suggested that athletes take steroids because they want people to like them. Even if an athlete has outstanding performance, they think they can do better with drugs, and they will perform even better so the fans, team owners, sponsors will like them better.

When I was competing, I had friends who justified taking performance enhancing drugs because “everyone is doing it”.

I was never the least bit tempted to use steroids. Maybe it would have helped me win, but that wouldn’t have been winning, it would have been cheating. If I had shot each of my opponents in the face with a bazooka, I would have been the one standing at the end of the match, too, but it would be hard to argue I won a judo tournament.

What I have concluded is this:

• Some people want to be the best in the world, they really believe they can do it and don’t care all that much whether anyone else knows how good they are or not. It’s BEING the best that is important to them. Those people don’t use steroids.
• Then there are people who want to be thought the best in the world but really don’t believe they can do it. Those people might use steroids because what matters to them isn’t actually being the best but having other people THINK they are.

So, basically, we are talking about the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.

Eric suggested that people in the second category are more common than the first. That may be true, but I am certain that by far the most common are people in a third category.

• People who want to be best in the world if it doesn’t require too much effort.