The Karate King

By kevin czerwinSki

Rick Rohrman says it seems like a minute since he first opened Budo Kai Traditional Karate and Fitness in River Edge.

That minute, however, covers 40 years, a span during which Rohrman has been a constant in the town’s business community while serving as a friend, teacher and confidant to thousands of students who have passed through the doors of Budo Kai Traditional Karate and Fitness.

Rohrman teaches Goju Ryu Karate for beginners through advanced levels and operates in a dojo that is set up in a traditional manner. All the classes are conducted on a suspended maple wood training floor, replicating the way karate is taught in Japan. He achieved his first black belt in 1976 and currently holds the rank of Sandan in traditional Goju Ryu and Isshin Ryu Karate in addition to holding a Kyoshi grade in an eclectic form of Goju Ryu.

While all the ranks, promotions and titles are wonderful accomplishments, it’s Rohrman’s approach, ability to work with and communicate with people of all ages and a genuine love of what he does that has made him so successful for so long.

“When I first started, the stressing of the belt wasn’t as important and there weren’t as many schools,” Rohrman said. “Now it’s common and some schools have more belts and promotions and some students see the belt as an end goal rather than self-improvement. When I started, there were no testing fees but now you have more belts which is more business. That’s changed.”

Rohrman, 63, began his karate journey 50 years ago at time when the sport wasn’t nearly as popular as it is now. However, he remembers the exact minute that his life in karate began, and it all started with a snapshot.

“In my very first class, they had a photographer put me in a gee and they put my hands in a certain position and snapped a picture,” said Rohrman, who grew up in Hillsdale and attended Pascack Valley High School. “That was the first second of my karate training. To this day I still look at that picture. When I was 17 years old, I was the first black belt to come out my school and that was new, no one before me had gone through that experience back then. Now it seems like everyone has a black belt and more experience in martial arts but back then it wasn’t big.”

Rohrman went on to attend college at Bergen Community and Fairleigh Dickinson to study music, but karate was never far from his heart or his future. He and friend joined forces and decided to form their own karate school. When they were looking for locations, they discovered the building in River Edge and Rohrman has been there ever since.

“This was an old ballet school and the first thing we saw here and that we were attracted to was the floor,” Rohrman said. “Back then, when we started

the school, you saw a lot of schools that did it on rugs and mats. We do have traditional mats, but the wooden floor is what you see in Japan. So, we started the school with the wood floor and that feeling.

“I would drive back from Fairleigh Dickinson, maybe it was 1979 or so, by here and I thought this must be a good school and years later I own the school,” he continued. “Is it fate or serendipity, who knows? But it’s a blessing.”

Rohrman and his friend remained partners for four years before the latter moved to Spokane, Washington. They remain friends but while his friend headed west, Rohrman solidified his place in the River Edge community.

There have been peaks and valleys since, like any business would have. He experienced a boom in the mid-1980s when the film The Karate Kid came out. Rohrman said his class sizes jumped immediately and that he averaged 50 or more students in class around that time. Coincidentally, the founder of the style of karate he teaches was created by a man named Myagi, which also happens to be the name of the character It’s not just kids, though, to whom Rohrman can relate. Oakland’s Bob Wilson, 68, has been a student of Rohrman’s for 28 years. He said he knew from the outset that Rohrman and his approach was special.

“When I first started looking at schools, I looked at five or six and this was the last one I went to,” Wilson said. “I saw all the methodologies and techniques and attitudes in the other schools and when I got to this place, I noticed a difference in the way that it was structured and how the attitudes of the people showed in a positive way. I knew this was where I wanted to drop anchor and I never regretted that choice.

“It wasn’t like The Karate Kid where you had a good school. A lot of people associate karate with Cobra Kai [the movie’s bad school] and that didn’t exist here; everyone was really pretty cool. They knew they weren’t going to war; it was just for sport and camaraderie. I’ve made some lifelong friends here and it’s been a great ride.”

encouraged me to build a portfolio Wilson and many of the school’s and apply to art school.” long-time students held a celebraAnd, to art school she went. From tion in November to honor Rohrcarrying her huge portfolio from man and his 40th anniversary of class to class, to sketching and serving the River Edge commu painting outdoors, to the smell of art nity. More than two dozen students supplies that filled the classrooms, attended and they all wore white Wotring has fond memories of that time.belts, symbolic of an entry-level student to honor Rohrman’s approach that karate is about bettering oneself “We started with the basics of sketchand not the color of a belt. ing, charcoal drawing, mastering perspective and eventually moved “More and more I appreciate how I into color and understanding how have been blessed to be able to do color can impact one another,” said this as long as I have the have the students I have had. Some of the things they have shared with me are just phenomenal. I can’t believe Wotring of her college experience. “That’s what interested me most in the beginning and I started building it. The relationship with people is upon that in my work.” much more than I thought [it would be]. It’s been awesome and I’ve got-After college, Wotring moved to New ten so many friends. I have some York and then to Jersey City shortly students who have been with me thereafter. longer than some friends have been married.” “When I first moved to New Jersey I was working and living in my studio Rohrman owns the building in apartment, which was very small,” which the dojo is housed. There said Wotring. “I had a long narrow is also a candy store located in the hallway that led into my apartment building and he is hopeful of buy-so I would line my hallway walls with ing the store but that doesn’t mean drop cloth and stretch canvas all the he will be giving up the school or way down the corridor. It was the stop teaching. He says he will always only place in the apartment that was be teaching but perhaps not in the long enough for my canvases.”commercial way he is doing now. “I can keep the school and just keep doing what I do conveniently,” Rohrman said. “In my head I like Over time, Wotring branched out. Her art studio now resides in Manhattan, where she enjoys the explorto think I am still 22 but I’m not. atory process of abstract painting. “When I start a piece, I don’t know “I hope I can keep going forever,” exactly where it’s going or how it he continued. “I’m 63, I’m healthy will look when it’s completed. I love and God willing I’ll just keep going.

If I make it to 72 or 73 it will be 50 years. I just have to keep moving forward.”

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