Fighting was Martin Chisholm\u2019s salvation, so now this 52-year-old ex-Marine is teaching a newer generation of troubled teens to fight to succeed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI help them find the warrior in them,\u201d says Chisholm, who owns the Chisholm Academy of Self-Defense in Stratford, Conn. \u201cAnd that allows me to be alive, to have some self-worth.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chisholm grew up in a tough section of Brooklynn, N.Y., and he bore a double disadvantage.\u00a0 \u00a0\u201cMy mother was white and my father was African-American,\u201d he explains. \u201cI was very picked on. Fighting gave me some protection. And it boosted my self-esteem. So I pass those skills on to other kids now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Boxing, kick-boxing and karate were all parts of Chisholm\u2019s arsenal by the time he joined the U.S. Marine Corps in 1980. His platoon saw combat in Beirut, although he missed much of it for medical reasons, so he emerged without many of the physical and emotional scars of so many of this nation\u2019s warriors.<\/p>\n
But he didn\u2019t escape entirely.<\/p>\n
\u201cComing out of the Marine Corps, I went through my own period of drinking, drugging and partying,\u201d he says. But his father, also a former Marine and by then in recovery just north of the Big Apple in Connecticut, intervened.<\/p>\n
\u201cAbout 25 years ago, my dad came to New York, took a look at my lifestyle, and told me I needed to get a fresh start. I began going to AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) meetings and recovery houses with my dad.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chisholm attended St. Michael\u2019s College in nearby Vermont and became certified in adolescent drug addiction. Then he headed over to Bridgeport, Conn., to work with teens. \u201cBridgeport was a needy place, filled with gangs and drugs, so I fit right in,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
But it was also a challenging place for a guy with his own addictions. \u201cSpending a lot of time partying was not helpful to a marriage or to a job, so I finally decided I didn\u2019t want to do that,\u201d he says. \u201cThen as I went through different AA meetings around the area, I discovered that the world of alcoholism was huge and it was filled with all kinds of people: lawyers, businessmen, politicians, legislators and judges.\u201d<\/p>\n
Today, Chisholm has been clean for a quarter-century and sober for more than 16 years. He has been married three times and has eight children, ranging in age from 1 to 31 years old.<\/p>\n
His original youth center evolved into a martial arts studio in 1994 and more recently into a full-fledged gym. \u201cAnd I go into prisons and reform schools to talk with kids about fighting and about gangs,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
One of his constant messages is about sobriety, but he knows he needs to downplay it a bit so as not to alienate his audience. \u201cI don\u2019t want to blackball alcohol, but I do want to blackball alcohol abuse and bad behavior,\u201d he says. \u201cI want to teach these kids to manage or sidestep all their hurdles.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some of the kids in his gym come from productive families, he says, but most of them are at-risk kids from the streets. \u00a0If they can\u2019t pay, that\u2019s generally not a problem — he\u2019ll find a way to let them earn their way in.<\/p>\n
Sponsored jointly by the Stratford Police Department, he has created a program called \u201cOur Pal Boxing\u201d for kids aged 6 to 21. One of its missions is to help instill core values in these kids, things like focus, respect, self-discipline, self-confidence, goal-setting and perseverance.<\/p>\n
\u201cMartin understood our desire to do much more for our kids, so it\u2019s been a great private-public partnership\u201d says Stratford Police Chief Patrick Ridenhour. \u201cIt\u2019s a great way for kids to see that officers are only human behind their badges and their guns, so we have officers in there working with the kids too.\u201d<\/p>\n
In addition, Chisholm helps train the police department SWAT team, says Ridenhour.<\/p>\n
\u201cPersonally, I just love the guy,\u201d the chief adds. \u201cWhen he promises something, he\u2019ll move heaven and earth to get it done. He doesn\u2019t give up on anyone or anything. And we\u2019re already seeing results of this program in our kids.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Fighting was Martin Chisholm\u2019s salvation, so now this 52-year-old ex-Marine is teaching a newer generation of troubled teens to fight to succeed. \u201cI help them find the warrior in them,\u201d says Chisholm, who owns the Chisholm Academy of Self-Defense in Stratford, Conn. \u201cAnd that allows me to be alive, to have some self-worth.\u201d Chisholm grew […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericnewhouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericnewhouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericnewhouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericnewhouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericnewhouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ericnewhouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericnewhouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericnewhouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericnewhouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}