Don
Bendell Throws, Kicks, and Punches
Bendell first studied judo in 1966 and
moved on to jujitsu and karate by 1967, competed in numerous
tournaments, and began teaching martial arts in the mid-1970s when he
returned to Fort Bragg in North Carolina and opened a karate school
nearby. Civilian volunteers helped him to establish a tae kwon
do program for the 18th Airborne Corps, Fort Bragg, and
Fort Campbell, Kentucky. In 1995, Bendell was inducted into the
International Karate Hall of Fame. He continues to maintain an
interest in his Cañon City school, officially owned and
operated by his sons, Bendell Karate, but focuses more on writing
nowadays.
Don
Bendell Speaks About Writing
Waiving his advertised $2,000 fee, Don
Bendell read excerpts from his work at the University of Southern
Colorado in April 2002. When he was little, he said afterwards, his
father told him that he had diarrhea of the mouth. This was
because, according to Bendell, he had a public speaker uncle who used
“ten-dollar words.” This intrigued the
five-year-old, who tried to use the new words every chance he
got. It was when he was this age that he knew he wanted to
write.
His advice to writers includes working
hard, working for free if you have to, writing for passion regardless
of outer success or even natural talent, and promoting
yourself.
He also recommends that people write
about things with which they are familiar. If a person isn’t
really familiar with what they are writing, then they need to do
research. Bendell finds himself doing a great deal of research
on his books, he told me, but the majority of them are rooted in what
he knows. He started out writing a series of science fiction
book, the “Tracker” series, under the pen name Ron
Stillman. When Bendell insisted that his real name be used, the
publishing company found it easy to kill him off and find another
writer to write as Stillman.
While he likes to say, “Crash away
through the door,” he was unhappy writing for the “Tracker”
Series. He claimed to be a “literary whore” during
that time, meaning that he wasn’t writing what he thought he
should be writing, he was just writing for pay. He needed to
find himself an agent.
By procuring a lawyer friend to read his
books and act as his agent, Bendell was able to obtain further book
deals. It was only after he was widely published that he was able to
find an agent. “It’s backwards,” he told
me. “You have to have an agent to get a book deal, but
you have to have a book deal to get an agent.”
Bendell’s
first book under his own name, a non-fiction account entitled Crossbow,
was based on his experience in Vietnam as an advisor to the Montagnards, or
“mountain people,” an ethnic group distinct from other Vietnamese.
He was assigned to an A-Team living at Dak Pek with the Montagnards in the highlands
of Central Vietnam. Bendell led the secret Operation Phoenix program,
which sought to assassinate Viet Cong leaders, for the immediate area of operations.
For a year, Bendell risked his life many times, coming close to losing it.
He was forced to eat whatever was available including monkey, rats, maggots,
snakes, grubs, bats and the like. Eventually illness forced him to be
evacuated to Tokyo.
Don
Bendell Tracks Lost Children and Bad Guys
Years later, in Cañon City,
Bendell used his mountain experience to take up tracking. "When
I was a kid my buddies always wanted to be the cowboys and I wanted
to be the Indian," he said. He found the body of one lost hiker
and a lost horse, and his Web site describes his unsuccessful
searches for Jaryd Atadero, a 3-year-old boy who vanished from a
hiking party in northern Colorado in 1999, and for the three Cortez,
Colorado, cop-killers who vanished into the Four Corners country in
1999. (Two were found dead; one is still unaccounted for.)
He has some competition from the
Department of Corrections’ fulltime trackers. When two recent
escapees were captured, Bendell said that he could have found them
faster.
“Recently, two fugitives escaped
from a nearby prison and tried to hide in country that is very simple
and familiar for my dogs and horse to search in. I offered to help
but was told I was not needed, and in one sense, I was not. One
fugitive was caught within 48 hours, but the second fugitive was
caught after five days and nights on the loose. The fact that they
were apprehended is great, but what if the second fugitive would have
killed an innocent person, or more, during those five days? Not
counting my tracking experience, my dog and horse would have easily
run on their trail, and had them both within a couple of hours.”
The main character in his series of
western novels about the Colt family also happens to be a
tracker. Chris Colt is a town marshal and chief of
scouts. Colt is a widower with two children. and a late
wife. Many of the characters are named after people whom
Bendell knows. He says that he considers it to be a way to work out
his issues with people. Often times, he will name bad
characters after people with whom he is in a dispute. And Chris
Colt’s late wife’s name is Shirley. And while many
people ask if Chris Colt is modeled after Bendell, he swears he is
not. In fact Bendell says that when he created Chris Colt, he
closed his eyes and pictured Tom Selleck.
NEXT: Don Bendell, the actor.
1, 2, 3
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