Karate, Family, and Fundraisers, Oh My! My Cup is Full and Running Over June 2006

by Lea Brockman
Photos by Russell Byrne

I was born in San Diego but, since I was a Navy brat, I was raised in no place in particular. I attended Junior College for a few years in San Diego and Livermore. I’ve filled my life with wonderful people and challenging activities. My life revolves around God, my family, and service to the community. As a result, my life is overflowing with purposeful and satisfying activities.

What About Bob?
Everything in my life changed forever when I ran into Bob Brockman. I was playing first base on a municipal team that Bob was coaching. It was love at first sight for me. I don’t know if “love” is actually the right word for the initial rush I felt. I just knew that the guy sure looked good in his Wrangler blue jeans.

I caught Bob’s attention in a major way when a game was cancelled by rain. In the words of an old song, “It was a most convenient shower,” because Bob and I went out for dinner together to console ourselves for the game we had missed. As we spoke I realized that, besides being hunky, Bob and I shared the same faith in God and had the same family values. We began to move into each others’ lives, and whatever it was that I had been feeling about those Wranglers blossomed into genuine love and commitment. Bob moved to Brentwood in October 1986. We married on May 9, 1987 and I moved into Bob’s house in the Villa Terrace subdivision, which is located right beneath the Brentwood municipal water tower.

Bob was working as a contractor; I had a somewhat esoteric job as a commercial roof inspector. I sort of fell into the profession. My mom worked for a roofing engineering and inspection firm and told me that they were looking for another roof inspector. I’ve always had a “can do” spirit, so when mom told me about that job I thought, “I can do that!” I inspected roofs for the next six years.

My Life of Punching, Kicking, and Gouging
Life changed again for me when Bob and his son Bobby enrolled in a martial arts program. At first I resisted joining them for what seemed like the perfectly logical reason that I didn’t want to pay somebody to beat me up. A few years later, however, I enrolled in a Kempo Karate course of my own, studying Shaolin Kempo techniques.

It turned out I had an aptitude for the sport and quickly developed a consuming passion to learn how to punch, kick, and gouge with the best of them. I fought hard and mastered the Kempo style, plus I learned a number of techniques for effective self-defense. In my first year of study I passed the two Bobs and a couple years later began teaching my own classes.

Martial arts is a huge confidence builder. It provides a person with sufficient strength to simply walk away with graceful composure from any confrontation. My partner, Bob Skidmore, and I share a philosophy to first use our strongest weapon, our brains, to avoid conflict. After all, if you are trained in martial arts there’s absolutely nothing you need to prove. A potential opponent might feel that he/she came off victorious because you wouldn’t fight, but you are walking away confident in the knowledge that you permitted the creep to live.

Kempo Karate is actually a beautiful form. I greatly appreciate the elegant manner in which it combines performance art with great physical exertion, requiring strength, stamina, agility, and intense focus.

Our daughter, Robyn, followed in my footsteps by earning her black belt and becoming an instructor herself. She teaches classes for us at our Nor Cal Kempo Karate Studio in the Sunset Park. Robyn is only 17, but has competed in State Championships. We keep our studio small and intimate, just the way we like it.

I am a certified YogaFit and pilates instructor. I’m teaching martial arts and fitness simply for the personal enjoyment I get out of watching other people’s progress. I’ve been working with people who have physical issues and aiding them in their recovery. I gain as much satisfaction as they do, I think, in seeing their limitations fall away.

Adventures in Service
Our family is involved in community service. We do outreach ministries with our church, for example. My daughter, Robyn, has a heart for little kids and for seniors. When she was 12 she used to go next door and sit on the front porch with a neighbor lady who was in her 90s. Robyn would spend hours just sitting at her side talking and listening to stories about a vanished world that survived only in an old lady’s memories.

My own community service began about five years ago when Pete Petrovich enlisted Bob and me in Ken Behring’s Wheelchair Foundation’s Drive Fore Mobility Committee. Working with that group made me realize how easy it is to make a difference in this world. I personally went on three wheelchair deliveries, and handed out chairs to people who had been rendered immobile by accident or disease. I would realize, sometimes with a shock, that we were changing people’s lives. In some cases we were actually giving them a life. The experiences changed me almost as much as they changed the people we were helping.

Bob and I took our children, Robyn and Jordan, on one of these trips. The kids assembled wheelchairs and helped put people into them. We didn’t know it, but Jordan had brought his savings with him and as he assembled each of the chairs he would stuff some of his money into the little tool pouches that went with each chair. We would never have found out about what he was doing if he hadn’t run out of funds just as he got to the last wheelchair and asked me for a donation, so that the last recipient wouldn’t be the only one not to get money.

I’m delighted with the Wheelchair Foundation – and thrilled that through my efforts on the committee I help provide mobility for people in 144 countries around the world. However, our own area also has needs that we must address. Shepherd’s Gate and the Village Resource Center, for example, are attempting to help disadvantaged people on our own doorsteps.

Ike Montanez got us involved in Shepherd’s Gate. Ike is the epitome of a faithful servant because, like another famous servant, Ike “…did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life.” Besides the Village Resource Center and Shepherd’s Gate, Ike is serving on the Brentwood Diversity Committee, and one way or another has spent his life in service to the Brentwood community and around the world. Ike is worthy of imitation. Dafne Swisher, another volunteer and major fundraiser, is working with Ike and is very effective in encouraging people to help serve others in need.

Addressing Local Healthcare Challenges
Bob and I are serving on the Delta Memorial Hospital Foundation. The Foundation was established in 1977 as an independently incorporated non-profit organization with a charter to raise money to support local health care services. In particular, the Foundation provides opportunities for individuals and businesses to contribute to assisting Sutter Delta’s not-for-profit mission of improving the quality of health in East Contra Costa County. In 1996, Delta Memorial Hospital officially changed its name to Sutter Delta Medical Center. At that time the Board of Directors of the Foundation voted to retain the name Delta Memorial Hospital Foundation to maintain the link to the past and to the community.

The Foundation is governed by a Board of Directors that shares Sutter Delta Medical Center’s vision for providing local quality health care. Every dollar raised by the Foundation goes to support the hospital. Over the past 24 years the Delta Memorial Hospital Foundation has raised nearly $10 million dollars. Some of those funds were used to build the Edna Fallman Education Center, which is open to the community for health education purposes and to provide a meeting place for various support groups.

The Sutter Delta Medical Center has an affiliation agreement with the parent Sutter Health Network specifying that funds given to the Foundation remain at our local Sutter Delta Medical Center. All proceeds benefit the health and well being of East County residents.

Bob joined the board when the foundation wasn’t making much money. He took courses on how to encourage people to donate funds. Three years ago he started an annual fundraiser golf tournament, modeling it after the Wheelchair Foundation’s Drive for Mobility Golf Tournament.

Bob sometimes shows more enthusiasm in trying to help than is good for him. He becomes over-extended and ends up biting off more than he can chew. He starts out doing one thing, and ends up doing ten. Eventually he has to back off. Bob Brockman is never a person to let others down. If he says he will do something, you can count on him doing it. However, he sometimes “does it” by handing it off to me. “Here, Honey,” he will say. “Will you take care of this for me?”

That first year the board was on the point of canceling the tournament, but we decided “No! We can make this happen.” Bob and I are now co-chairs, except that we now regard everyone as responsible. In a sense all the committee members are co-chairpeople (co-chairpersons?)

Now we are making preparations for the Hope Fore Life 2006 Golf Classic, which will be held at Roddy Ranch on June 26. The Tournament is a lot of fun for the participants, and provides a way for residents to have a great time while doing something good for our community and for themselves.

As if our lives weren’t already full enough, a year ago Bob successfully ran for a seat on the Brentwood City Council. This started when our son, Jordon, asked Bob why he didn’t run for the position. Bob reminded him how he had seen so much disruption in the life of one of his friends. When his friend’s dad had done this, Jordan had asked his dad not to ever run. “Well,” our son said. “I’ve changed my mind. I want you to run now.” He had become mature in his own mind, plus he had come to understand enough about the community to know what needed to be done. And he knew his dad would be able to help make it happen.

We’re too busy, but I wouldn’t change a thing, I frankly couldn’t stand being bored. Life is an adventure, so “I keep drinking from my saucer ’cause my cup is running over,” like the song says. It feels good to get out of bed in the morning!