George Dillman - Prometheus: The George Dillman Story

SELECTED SOURCE MATERIALS

APPENDIX A

Interview of Dr. Ralph Buschbacher
by Dr. Charles Terry

January 21, 2010

In the Beginning

I ve been involved in the martial arts since I was a child. My mother actually started training first, while she was at the YWCA practicing dance. When she ran out of dance classes to take, she started doing a martial arts class. My sister was six and I was eight at that time, and we thought the practice, and especially the tournaments, looked like fun.

Right around then we moved to Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, which is near Reading. My mom found Master George Dillmans school and we all started going there. I took my first class on a Saturday morning when I was nine.

Before we actually worked with George, we had some other teachers first, including Kim Dillman, who was one of my primary teachers. My mom, my sister and I continued in the martial arts for years, and we all ended up getting black belts. In fact, my family was so involved that George eventually gave my father an honorary black belt.

We did a number of competitions and demonstrations with George and Kim in those early years, including one for a local cable show and various demonstrations in small towns around rural Pennsylvania. While I worked mostly with Kim at first, I saw George around, of course, and we did many activities together. He liked the fact that we were a young brother and sister team and were about the same belt level, so he paired us up doing combinations, as well as for kata together, and not-quite synchronized kata.

When I went to college, I decided to start my own class, which is when George and I got a little closer. My group sponsored him for seminars down at the University of Virginia. At this time also, I started winning tournaments, and so I popped up on his radar screen a bit more as an individual.

Many of the martial arts groups on campus were university sponsored, but I had set up the biggest independent karate group at the time, and it was very successful. We trained a lot of really good people and did a lot of competitions. All during college, and especially while I was in medical school, I participated in many tournaments. I was ranked in Virginia for a number of years, and won 100 or so different trophies for various aspects of the arts.

In 1984, I completed undergraduate college studies at the University of Virginia, and stayed there to pursue my medical degree. That was the same time that George started working with Seiyu Oyata, and we all got more into pressure points.

I did my residency in physical medicine and rehabilitation at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond. But even then, I would still go back to UVA to teach the martial arts classes there. These actually ran for about twelve years while I was in various stages of training, both with George and with my medical studies.

Throughout the time I was in college, and then in medical school at UVA, I would drive up to his house in Reading almost every weekend, stay for one or two days and then drive back. Especially in the summer, when I did not have school, I remember going up every week and doing some training with him. As my parents also lived close by, sometimes I stayed with them, and worked out with Dillman. When my parents eventually moved to New York, I continued the weekend visits, staying with the Dillmans and sleeping on their couch.

Fortunately, I was there for Oyatas visit, and for the first time Wally Jay came to the house. Wally Jay was showing Dillman this small circle theory, and the little spinning wheel in your wrist. I remember that I was the guinea pigthe guy they demonstrated things like that on.

Connections Between the Martial Arts and Medicine

Studying the martial arts was extremely important for me. Actually, when I was in medical school, martial training was equally as important to me as my medical training. I think I got my fourth degree black belt at about the same time I got my M.D. degree... in 1988.

My participation in the martial arts is probably the main reason that I went into physical medicine and rehabilitation (PM&R) as a specialty. I enjoyed the musculoskeletal aspects of this field: learning how the body works and how you can manipulate the body. We used these principles in medicine to heal, and in martial arts these same principles could be applied to control people or even to injure them. So, these two fields of study presented different sides of the same coin for me, and the martial arts were critically decisive in my career choice. The martial training also made me a better medical student, and a much better resident. Obviously the discipline I had learned, along with the teaching aspects of that training, helped me greatly, and I credit the martial arts with whatever success I have had academically.

Throughout my medical training, George and I talked a lot about the medical and neurological aspects of the martial work, questioning what could be going on with many of our self-defense techniques and with pressure points. I think I was the first person to give him medical booksan anatomy text about dissection and also a physiology book. These books were hardcore, generally not something for a layperson to pick up and read, but George was very good at reading them; he was obviously a natural student of anatomy and physiology.

I helped to explain a lot about anatomy and physiology to him. Once, during an especially critical period when he was starting to get into pressure point techniques and grappling with it all, he came down to visit me at UVA and we went into the cadaver room, where I showed him everything. He came to our anatomy lab several times, and learned a lot from seeing the dissection of cadavers. He loved it. Dillman was like a kid in a candy store. He particularly loved seeing how tendons worked.

When youre in medicine, you dont think about how amazing it is to actually see underneath the skin. Most people dont ever get to witness that. When George came to see dissections, MRIs were less common. There was less technology and you couldnt just learn what things look like on the inside by watching on TV. He was quite interested in seeing how the tendons attach; how if you pull on one tendon you could get finger movement. We examined how things are interconnected and how the nerves travel. Mostly we looked at the arm, the brachial plexus, and the forearm. One night, when we were studying the forearm, looking at the interosseous membrane, we were alone in the cadaver room. It was really dark and we only had one light on, and all of a sudden the wind blew at something outside and made a whoooo sound just like in a spooky movie. It sounded like a ghost! Pretty creepy, and just perfect for the setting.