The History of AKSD Part III
Grandmaster Allen Steen:
Father of Texas Karate / Taekwondo

By Ray Bennett

In THE HISTORY OF AKSD PARTS I AND II we learned how some courageous young people took a sad and neglected karate school and made it into the home we know today as AKSD.

That sad little karate school wasn't always so sad. It was once the home to some great legends of Texas Taekwondo. Among them was a man named Allen Steen.

Allen Steen met Jhoon Rhee

Allen Steen met Jhoon Rhee (the man who brought Tae Kwon Do to the United States) as a fellow student at the University of Texas in 1959. He enrolled in Mr. Rhee's class, which was the first major University martial arts program in Texas.

In 1962, Mr. Steen opened the first commercial Tae Kwon Do / Karate school in the United States outside of New York, Chicago and California becoming known as the "Father of Texas Karate." That first year he enrolled almost a thousand students.

Steen earned his black belt in September of 1962. He presented his first black belt (to J. Pat Burleson, Steen's senior student) in 1963. Mr. Steen's reputation as a champion and trainer of champions remains unparalleled. Grandmaster Steen's many champions include Burleson, Skipper Mullins, Fred Wren, Demetrius Havanas, Roy Kurban, Jim Harkins, Keith Yates, Jim Miller, Jeff Smith, George Minshew, Ray McCallum and Larry Wheeler.

Steen won dozens of championships

Steen won dozens of championships in an impressive competitive career. In 1966 he beat the top two competitors in the country back to back, Chuck Norris and Joe Lewis, to become the only Texan to win the prestigious Grand-championship of the International Karate Championships.

In 1963, Mr. Steen promoted the first ever Tae Kwon Do / Karate tournament in the state of Texas (and the first in America except for New York and Los Angeles). His annual Dallas event, The United States Karate Championships, was the second largest martial arts tournament in the world for twenty years. In 1975, ABC's "Wide World of Sports" covered it marking the first national coverage of a karate competition.

Grandmaster Steen established the most successful chain of schools in the 1960s and early 70s. Though he started schools all over the state, and even to other states, one of the first was a little concrete block building on Garland Road; the current home of AKSD. To date, Grandmaster Steen and his descendent black belts (numbering well over 2400) have taught over 2 million students in schools, classes and seminars all around the globe.

Grandmaster Steen remains very active in the martial arts

Grandmaster Steen remains very active in the martial arts training daily and still teaching a select group of private students.

Though he hasn't been back to the little building on Garland Road in a while, I'm sure he would be proud to know that the tradition of Texas Taekwondo is still alive and well in the dedicated students of AKSD.