Chemeketa Voices

Taking stock:
Shoes? Check. Pants? Check. Education? Check.

Squatting with his back straight and his wrists wrapped behind his ankles, Mike Beckley leads his Kajukenbo Tum Pai, a form of Kung Fu, students through warm-up exercises.

"Caleb," he asks. "What do we do when it starts to hurt?"

"Smile through it," Caleb answers.

It's hollow-sounding advice while pain sears his students' legs and backs, but Beckley lives it.

On the run

As a toddler, Mike Beckley, his mother and siblings fled an abusive husband and father.

"My Mom brought us from Indiana and moved to Tacoma, Wash., where she started taking classes to earn a degree in television production," said Beckley, 29, a Chemeketa Community College student.

His mother got a job in Portland and the family moved to a Vancouver. His relationship with his father was strained at best, but Beckley didn't welcome news that the man committed suicide on Father's Day in 1986.

"I really only have two memories of my father," said Beckley. "The first is running down a hallway and him chasing me before I turned around and punched him in the groin. The second is of a pillow fight when he came out to visit us the one time before he died."

Beckley said the second memory stands out for a couple of reasons, but primarily because it was one of the few times his family was around his father and no one was being beaten.

"The only thing I really know about his death was that his blood-alcohol level was three times the legal limit and that he tried to back out. They found rope burns on his hands that were said to be evidence of him trying to get out."

By the time Beckley's father committed suicide, his family was slowly losing its already-tenuous grip on normalcy.

"My sister got involved with the wrong crowd at a very young age and dropped out of high school in ninth grade, my brother dropped out as a senior," said Beckley.

For many kids, watching older siblings drop out of school can have a devastating effect on their will to stick with school, but Beckley stuck with it.

"As a freshman, I was all about being a kid and hanging out with friends and girls. Then my mom lost her job," he said.

He and his mother moved in with grandparents, but the situation soon became untenable and homelessness became the only option. At age 16, Beckley was sofa surfing at friends' homes and living on the streets.

During this time he picked up knowledge no one should have to live with.

"Laundromats are really great. Especially the 24-hour ones because you can lean up against a dryer, stay warm and sleep for a little while," said Beckley. "I was watching a documentary the other night about people addicted to crystal methamphetamine and living on the streets. I could totally relate to some of their experiences because I've seen those people while sitting at a bus stop waiting for the first bus in four hours trying to get to someone's house."

Every morning became an act of taking stock:

"Got shoes? Yep. Pants? They got a big hole in ‘em, but they'll do. It was like that. I became acutely aware of what I needed to get through the day."

Whereas others might have become bitter over the circumstances he faced, Beckley simply reassessed his values. Education rapidly ascended to the top of the list.

One constant

During Beckley's time on the streets, he changed schools 11 times between the end of his freshman year the middle of his junior year. He was lucky enough to have friends as committed to his education as they were to theirs.

"They actually told me I was going to finish school if they had to handcuff me to themselves," said Beckley.

Eventually, he found classes that made him want to stick with it for personal reasons.

"I discovered theater in my sophomore year. Mostly it was just a coping thing. I got to be someone else for a time," he said.

But he was far from out of the woods. Transferring schools at a rabbit's pace, and moving from schools on a semester to trimester system, left his transcript in shambles and Beckley facing the prospect of being a third-year senior before he had enough credits to receive a diploma.

"Another friend told me about the alternative high school he was attending, and how I might still be able to graduate on time because I could earn credits over and above the basic requirements," he said.

He enrolled and busted his chops to earn all the credits he needed. He even founded a theater club at the school.

Beckley had the desire to continue his education, he had his heart set on becoming a theater teacher, but the means didn't arrive in time. He was halfway through his first term at Clark Community College when he found out he wouldn't be receiving financial aid and quit school when the term was over.

The experience opened another door, however. While attending Clark, Beckley started taking Kajukenbo Tum Pai classes. He'd taken other martial arts classes that fell by the wayside for a variety of reasons, but something about Kajukenbo Tum Pai lit a spark under him.

"As I was learning it, I realized that I didn't want to be just a student, it was something I wanted to teach," said Beckley.

While working toward his first-degree black belt, the skill level required to teach, Beckley learned an important lesson at a seminar.

"Every day you're teaching martial arts, you have to think about it like you have no students and you're unemployed. You have to have something to fall back on," he said.

The Chemeketa Experience

That bit of information motivated him to give college another try. He enrolled at Chemeketa when he and his fiancee, Audrey Moss, moved south from Vancouver to Salem.

"I'd always been sort of scared of computers, but right before I started school again I bought one and tried to learn more about them," he said.

He registered for a computer science class his first term and ended up so intrigued by the field that he wrote a research paper on computer science career opportunities for another class.

"I realized it was something I could do from wherever I was teaching a martial arts class. Teaching the kajukenbo would be like taking off time from work to go play," he said.

He also started teaching Kajukenbo Tum Pai courses as a community education class, but has since moved his school, Dragon Fist Kung Fu, to Yoshikai Elementary School in Salem. Class meets every Monday and Wednesday.

Nowadays, Beckley conveys an aura of serenity that infects everyone he comes in contact with and belies his tumultuous past.

"Mike lives his life with such wisdom and understanding. There is never a day that I see him when he doesn't have a smile and joke to make me laugh," said Janie Sayers, Beckley's co-worker in the Chemeketa Foundation office where he is a work-study student.

Parting shots

Beckley is slated to finish his associates of arts Oregon transfer degree at the end of the 2008 winter term Then he's headed to Western Oregon University to continue his computer science studies. It's hard to imagine he'll ever face obstacles as tough as the ones he's already overcome, but if he does Kajukenbo Tum Pai and life itself has prepared him:

"I tell people Kajukenbo is like giving someone a tool box and filling it with tools. Whatever the student chooses to put in the top drawer are the tools they'll use the most. Whether it's screws and nails, tape and glue, kicking, or striking, it's all going to work," said Beckley.

Beckley has all those tools and more in the top of his tool box, but the most powerful one he possesses is his smile.

By Eric A. Howald. Have a great Chemeketa story? Send us an e-mail.

Updated October 25, 2007 by Marketing and Student Recruitment.