About Sifu Latimer

My interest in the martial arts began in the early 1970s. I was an awkward high school kid in rural Arkansas and Bruce Lee was all the rage. One day I was given the opportunity accompany a couple of friends to their karate class in a neighboring town some 25 miles from my home. I loved the martial arts class and ended up training with them for about two years. I graduated high school and the call for adventure was loud and clear. I enlisted in the Navy and set off to see the world. Six years passed, and this farm boy had finished his seventh submarine patrol in the Pacific, and was teaching submarine warfare at a U.S. Naval facility in San Diego, California. It was then that I walked into the Kung Fu San Soo martial arts school in Chula Vista. On that day my life’s course was altered forever. It was 1981 and I was just 24.

My initial response was just like that of numerous others experiencing Kung Fu San Soo for the first time: total amazement. I knew I had to learn this martial art. I turned to the owner and instructor, Sifu Richard Dinsmore, and asked, "Where do I sign?" Thus began my life as a disciple of the martial art Kung Fu San Soo. In the years that followed I studied the science of Kung Fu San Soo. Along the way I was honored with a black belt and it was not long afterward I was allowed to teach martial arts alongside Sifu Dinsmore and his senior black belts.

Sifu Dinsmore and I developed a deep friendship. He not only taught me how to fight, but he also taught me basic acupuncture, acupressure, medicinal herbology, and, musculoskeletal manipulation. I listened, I learned, I practiced, and I taught. In the year before Lo Sifu (Grand Master) Woo’s retirement, I was fortunate enough attend Black Belt martial arts classes at his school in El Monte, California. I am very proud to have met him, to have learned from him, and too have sweated in his school.

Kung Fu San Soo imbues tremendous self-confidence in those who embrace the art. It did not take long for that self-confidence to change how I approached living in general. I took Lo Sifu’s words of "You can take my life, but not my confidence" and "The art of Kung Fu San Soo does not lie in victory or defeat, but in building human character" and formed a philosophy of mastering life and myself in the process. I chose to control destiny instead of it controlling me. I approached each challenge in life as if I was entering combat. As in combat, it was all or nothing. As a result, my military career skyrocketed and I was swiftly promoted through the ranks.

As it is in the life of a Navy man, there comes a time that he has to return to sea. Shortly after receiving my third degree black belt I was assigned to a demanding tour aboard a uniquely tasked nuclear submarine. For those who have never experienced the interior of a modern submarine, let it be said that there is no room to work out (train) in. I had to look for alternatives instead of putting my martial arts training on hold while underwater for four to five months at a time. The solution was simple. Learn to work out in smaller areas. I looked around for the biggest piece of floor space that could be had. The largest I could find was about a 4 foot by 4 foot area in a very unique place. What resulted was the only Kung Fu San Soo school to ever exist literally atop a nuclear reactor. On my workout floor was a metal hatch that could be raised to reveal a leaded glass windowed view of the reactor core and control rods. That martial arts school also had the distinction of being the only one to ever have existed under the polar ice cap and on the North Pole.

I returned to San Diego in the spring of 1991 to finish the last four years of my naval career. I resumed my Kung Fu San Soo teaching position with Sifu Dinsmore and continued to grow in the martial art. My exposure to the healing arts during my San Soo journey left me with a great interest in medicine and I decided to become a physician upon my retirement from the military. I began night school in earnest, taught Kung Fu San Soo, and worked full-time as a Navy technical school administrator. I received my eighth degree black belt in August of 1994, thus attaining the honorary title of Master (Sifu). I retired from the Navy in the summer of 1995 at the age of 38 and left for Oklahoma to enter into the Northeastern State University College of Optometry. I received my doctorate in 2000 with honors and went immediately into private practice in Oklahoma City. Kung Fu San Soo was with me constantly during those hard days of studying and sacrifice to achieve my goal of becoming a physician. Today I own and operate a multi-doctor facility that specializes in vision care for infants, children, and those with special needs.

Kung Fu San Soo changes lives. It changed mine and it has changed so many others. This biography was written to illustrate the effect of Kung Fu San Soo on those who embrace it.