Who is Ed Parker?
Senior Grand Master Ed Parker is known worldwide as the “Father of American Kenpo Karate.” Mr. Edmund Kealoha Parker was born on March 18, 1931, in Honolulu, Hawaii, where he lived until 1950. Then he moved and went to attend college in Utah. He studied and earned his Black Belt in Kenpo Karate under the late Professor William K.S. Chow, one of the world’s leading Kenpo Black Belt holders and innovators of the art. Soon after he began his study of Kenpo, Mr. Parker knew that Kenpo would become a way of life for him. He opened his first private Kenpo Club in 1954 at Brigham Young University and his first public school in September of 1956 in Pasadena, California. Early in his training, Mr. Parker realized the need to further modify the Art of Kenpo to suit modern day fighting situations. Professor Chow had taught Mr. Parker a number of “Master Key Movements” which provided Mr. Parker his start to becoming a creative innovator. “The Parker System of American Kenpo” is based on principals
