A taekwondo instructor whose impact has been felt across the western suburbs earned the highest status of mastery within the martial art earlier this year.
Jerry Kidd, 74, who teaches taekwondo across North Riverside, Berwyn and River Forest, passed his test, taken in February in South Korea, to earn his ninth dan, or level, black belt from Kukkiwon, also known as the World Taekwondo Headquarters.
Kidd told the Landmark he went to South Korea late last year to take the test but initially failed due to a knee injury he sustained while training.
“I didn’t test very well because my knee was kind of weak, and they don’t really care about that. You pass, or you fail,” he said. “I wasn’t able to convince the judges that I passed, and that was a very big letdown for me, because I passed all eight of my exams before.”
The eighth- and ninth- level tests can only be conducted in South Korea, Kidd said, requiring him to travel back in February this year to retake the test, which he did “unbeknownst to a lot of people.”
John Suba, a program coordinator within North Riverside’s parks and recreation department, said he was the only one who knew that Kidd was traveling rather than out sick.
“He has been here as long as I’ve worked here. I started off part-time [in 2017], and we became friends because he would run his classes in the evenings, when I would work,” Suba said. “In February, he talked to me and said, ‘Listen, tell everybody I’m sick, I have the flu, and the doctor wants me to stay away from people for a week. I’m going to go back to Korea and get it.”
After passing the test and earning his ninth level black belt, Kidd became the second African American ever to do so, he said. He went back to South Korea for a third time in June for his award ceremony on June 19, where he met Ung Suk Yun, the president of Kukkiwon.
“It was the most interesting and exciting day of my life,” Kidd said. “You walk down that red carpeting, and you get behind the podium, and you have your speech made. It was kind of like the Oscars.”
Kidd said he first took up martial arts in 1976 at the age of 24 after he met a friend of a friend who practiced karate and invited him to join.
“I blew him off. The irony is, he came back to talk to my friend again, and I was there. He said to me, ‘I thought you were coming to class,’ and I felt so small. I’d dishonored him, and I was like, ‘Wow. I gave him my word, and I didn’t show up,’” he said. “I came to the class — best thing that ever happened to me.”
After six months of studying karate, the dojo closed down, and Kidd found a taekwondo studio in Franklin Park that he began studying at, though he had to reset his belt progress due to switching between martial arts. Over time, Kidd said he became one of his instructor’s “top black belts” and began to teach it on the side until he lost his full-time job.
In 1982, the same year he was laid off, Kidd opened his own taekwondo studio that he said he ran for the next two decades.
“I didn’t know how to run a business or do anything, and I had to learn all of that,” he said. “I opened a school in 1982. I ran that school for 20 years. My kids grew up in the school, and then I started doing part-time at the park district over here.”
In 1994, Kidd became the vice president of the United States National Taekwondo Federation, a role he still holds to this day. He said taekwondo “became [his] entire life,” and he still teaches classes across the western suburbs.
“To see children come in, sitting down inside of themselves, and then you work with them and develop their confidence, and they stand up inside themselves and say no or say yes to whatever they want, that’s a wonderful feeling. To change people’s lives, that’s what it’s about. It’s not about fighting,” he said. “When you see people grow right in front of your eyes, came in as a baby and now as a young adult, that’s the joy of martial arts.”
