"There were moments of gold, and there were flashes of light..."

Today's a pretty sad day in the jitsu community as our head of style, Brian Graham Shihan, passed away last night after complications following his surgery. This is fairly disheartening to anyone within the Jitsu community as he embodied everything that some of us have come to love and none of us would be doing the things we do if it wasn't for him.

I've had the privilege of meeting him only on a handful of occassions but every moment of it was a treat. He had a definate presence to him which everyone understood but no one ever dared question. He was always compared to Yoda as he would mutter random musings about things no one could understand just to get a laugh but when he was serious, no one dared stand in his way afraid that he'd use the purest forms of jitsu to annihilate anyone within sight.

He was truly a fountain of knowledge to gain from and will sorrily be missed by all of us. Certainly though, if we were to use the adage that the measure of a man's life is in the people that he is able to give to, then Brian Graham has left us the legacy of a man far beyond what anyone could fathom.