My father is where I got all my martial arts from and was one of the top martial artist in the country at that time, a golden gloves boxing champion, a 6th degree black belt in Taekwondo etc. Although Master Lee's father was locked up for 10 years for a drug deal gone wrong, he was able to pass on his skills to him through phone conversation and his father would often tell Master Lee “you are stronger and trained harder than I was and did when I was your age”.
Growing up, Master Lee only practiced martial arts because he was an avid fan who wanted to be like his father, and because Travis’ last name was Lee, as Bruce Lee was still very famous at that time. At the age of 8 he got into Taekwondo at Kingschool under Master Key, and found an infinity for that art and practiced off and on.
In school, he faced very violent bullies and would often be assaulted in the bathroom and in gym class locker rooms. Travis made a decision that would change the course of his life forever. He trained taekwondo and Muay Thai very very hard on his own, for about a month, and used his clever mind to make one action that would deter any more bullies for the rest of his school and adult life. In the Book of 5 Rings, it says that by doing 1 action you should accomplish 1000 things.
Travis continued on to spread his legacy going in different dojos for fun and outworking the best students there to just test himself as he trained alone mostly. Having a big heart, Master Lee would often give an open ear to his classmates and friends to vent and would often sit with the odd person out who was sitting by themselves.
People would often say to him “I feel like I can just tell you anything”. And often people did. Master Lee had been on many receiving ends of phone calls of friends of his who wanted to commit suicide, and he would talk them out of it.
Master Lee would often, frighten the bully of others, would teach drug dealers selling very hard drugs “a lesson” when they would try to sell it to his friends that were barley 13 years old.
But this was a very dangerous position he took with unforeseen consequences, and Travis had to understand, that everything has a price, even heroics.
When Master Lee was 18, he suffered an almost fatal injury for protecting his female best friend from an abusive man and was hospitalized in the ER, even though Master Lee defeated the attacker who had a deadly weapon. On crutches barely able to move his body, the doctor told Travis, that “you must have an angel looking after you, 1 cm, closer you would not be alive.”
Being on crutches for about 3-6 months, Master Lee's body suffered from atrophy, (your muscle tissues begin to detrioate) and from that condition, Master Lee came down with all the symptoms of Multiple Sclerosis. Master Lee could not hold himself up, would lose energy doing very basic things. After 2-3 years living with these symptoms, he finally mustard up the courage to go the doctors. Every doctor told him, "there's nothing we could do".."you'll just have to live with it".
A fire ignited with Master Lee's belly and he refused to give up. He tried yoga, fitness, breathing techniques to not avail.
Finally, through a very " mystical experience" that bridged the gap between fantasy and reality, Master Lee found Kungfu and Qi Gong.
After one session of Qi Gong Master Lee felt he found the missing piece of the puzzle. In a foreign language, it was as if his body was calling out for Qi Gong, and Master Lee finally could understand the language.
For one year Master Lee did Qi Gong 2-3 times a day, and had all of his Multiple Sclerosis symptoms cease.
From that moment Master Lee became very passionate about Qi Gong and understood stress, physical, mental tension on a different level and made it his goal to share the wonderful healing art of Qi Gong with everyone.
Master Lee decided to use his skills and the lessons he learned from Shaolin Kungfu, his community work and combine it all into one program called The House Of Kung Fu, where people could learn Kungfu to learn how to master the mastery process and heal.
This idea sparked the imagination of his new business and friends ships, and allowed Master Lee to work along side many of Akron, Ohio's community activist.
The House of Kungfu continues to rise, to Canton, Kent, Cleveland, North, West, and East Akron, helping the homeless, drug recovery, depression, and chronic aliments.
This is a story of true glory, using an obstacle to make your platform to stand on, so all can be a witness.
