Born
and raised in Akron, Ohio, Don joined the U.S. Army
after graduating from Tallmadge High School in 1966.
Before that, he attended Coventry High School in
Portage Lakes. He was an MP for a short period and
worked as a guard in Maximum Security at Fort Dix,
New Jersey where he was shot in the cheek in a
training accident by an M-14 E2 Automatic rifle. He
still bears a barely-discernable scar along his
right cheek from it. After Infantry Officers
Candidate School and Airborne Training (Jump School)
at Fort Benning, Georgia, he was commissioned a
second lieutenant on June 1, 1967, and trained
extensively for a year with the 7th Special Forces
Group at Fort Bragg, North Carolina earning his
Green Beret. During Code of Conduct training (now
called SERE) where he was water-boarded, tortured,
and harassed in many ways, Don escaped from a
supposedly “escape-proof” POW compound at Fort Bragg
and earned a three-day Class A pass.” This year of
training included Vietnamese Language School under
the tutelage of Madame Nhu's sister (who was the
sister of the bachelor President of Vietnam Ngo Dinh
Diem and was considered Vietnam's First Lady). In
yet another strange training accident during this
period, Don, wearing black pajamas, and posing as a
Viet Cong crawling through culvert pipe tunnels ten
feet underground under a mock Viet Cong village at
Camp A.P. Hill, VA, had a member of the 3rd Infantry
Regiment throw a grenade into the tunnel thinking it
was C.S. (strong tear gas). An investigation by the
Pentagon uncovered it was actually a classified
experimental hand grenade, and it contained mustard
gas, which burned Don's face, hands, lungs, throat,
and mouth. As far as can be uncovered, Don is the
only veteran from the Vietnam Era who has been
burned with mustard gas. He was temporarily blinded
by the incident but recovered fully, except for
getting pneumonia and respiratory viruses easily.
Arriving in
Vietnam on May 31, 1968, Don was promoted the next
day to first lieutenant, assigned to the 5th
Special Forces Group in South Vietnam where he
became Executive Officer-Civil Affairs/Psychological
Operations officer of an A-Detachment, or A-Team,
A-242, at Dak Pek living with and training and
fighting with the Jeh tribe of Montagnards
(ferocious aboriginal-type warriors who lived in
Vietnam's mountainous Central Highlands). As an
additional duty, in July, Don was also assigned as
District Coordinator of the Top Secret Phoenix
Program for the Dak Pek and Dak Sut Districts in his
area of operations, and a few months later, the Jeh
Montagnards made him a Brigadier General in their
inter-tribal secret independence movement called the
FULRO (Fronts
Unifie de Lutte des Races-Oprimees),
which helped him significantly with his Phoenix
duties. During his tour Don commanded company-sized
operations and saw action not only in the Dak Pek
area of operations but near sister A-Camps Dak Seang,
Ben Het, Dak To, Polei Kleng, and he and commander
and still friend now-retired SF Colonel Joe Dietrich
led a task force on an assault into the NVA
stronghold the Plei Trap Valley an
operation where Don and 9 Montagnards captured a
Soviet 2000 kilo truck and Don and his patrol were
gassed by CS gas. Leading a joint Dak Pek/Dak Seang
160 Montagnard-operation west of Dak Seang, Don was
wounded, refused medevac, and recovered the body of
a downed medevac helicopter pilot and recovered the
helicopter. In March 1969, Don was
medically-evacuated, first to Pleiku's 71st Evac
Hospital, then the 1st Field Hospital in Tokyo for a
month, then back to Womack Army Hospital at Fort
Bragg in the United States, and finally, with a
3-Medical Profile, he was assigned to the 3rd
Special Forces Group, where he became the Group
Assistant S-2 (Staff Intelligence Officer) and was
the Officer in Charge of all the Top Secret Area
Studies for every nation in the continent of Africa.
He was not allowed to return to Viet Nam because of
his medical profile, although he kept trying to
return. In June of 1969, Don was promoted to Captain
and sent to the US Army Intelligence Officers School
at Fort Holabird, Maryland, where he graduated on
the Commandant's List. He had received a Top Secret
security clearance in Vietnam in early 1969. When
the 3rd Special Forces Group deactivated, Don became
an Assistant S-3, or Staff Operations Officer-Area
Specialist Officer with the now-defunct 6th Special
Forces Group, which was in charge of all the
countries in the Mideast. During his tenure with
the 3rd SFGA, Don became the first
Scoutmaster and organizer of a Boy Scout Troop
sponsored by the 3rd Special Forces Group
at Fort Bragg. That BSA troop still exists to this
day.
Frustrated
because he could not return to Vietnam and was told
he was "too unconventional" because he was an
Infantry officer with tours in 4 Special Forces
Groups, Captain Bendell was honorably discharged
from the Army in 1970. He began to pursue a number
of jobs, including a stint as a disc jockey and
radio salesman and producer at WAYN radio in
Rockingham, North Carolina. He also worked as a
plainclothes store detective, a planning coordinator
for a community action agency, and turned down a job
with the Secret Service to work as an executive
sales representative in Ohio with F.W. Means and
Co., Inc. He also started writing magazine articles.
Having studied various martial arts since 1966, he
opted to return occupationally to one of his first
loves, the martial arts. In Ohio, he became a
certified training officer for the Ohio Peace
Officers Training Council, and as a writer for
martial arts magazines, developed a friendship with
World Heavyweight Champion Muhammad Ali starting in
1973 which still continues. In the mid-seventies,
Don returned to the Fort Bragg area, because he
wanted to teach the martial arts to Green Berets and
other soldiers. Twice per week, Bendell taught
defense against knives, guns, and weapons, as well
as a combination of Tae Kwon Do, Jujitsu, and
Kickboxing at the Fort Bragg Boxing Club, and had a
school outside Fort Bragg, near Fayetteville, called
the Karate Institute, and a branch school in
Pinehurst. As a civilian volunteer, he also assisted
then-Commanding General Hank Emmerson in setting up
a Tae Kwon Do program for the 18th Airborne Corps,
which was comprised of Fort Bragg and Fort Campbell,
Kentucky called the "US Army-Fit-to Fight"
program. In June, 2005, legendary BLACK BELT
magazine had a photo feature story about Don called
WISDOM AGAINST WEAPONS and another feature story in
BLACK BELT in May, 2008 about combining Jujitsu and
Tae Kwon Do or Karate.
In the August,
2009 issue of SOLDIER OF FORTUNE magazine, there was
an eight-page interview and feature story about
Don. He has also been featured in other national
martial arts magazines, and from 1997 through 2000,
he and wife Shirley put on the very popular and
successful National karate tournament called "Don
Bendell's Halloween Classic," which drew competitors
from all over the United States. He also toured the
country as a primary referee at many major World
Championships, including the Diamond Nationals in
St. Paul, the Battle of Atlanta, the Bluegrass
Nationals in Memphis, the Compete Nationals in Los
Angeles, John Chung's SIDEKICK World Championship in
Washington, DC, Stan Witz' International Karate
Championship in Las Vegas, the Desert Classic in
Phoenix, and many more. Don has also trained dozens
of State Champions and a number of National and
World Champions in forms, weapons forms, sparring,
and grappling. One of his former students was a
10-times NASKA World Champion in sparring. In high
school, Don was a first string lightweight wrestler
at Coventry and Tallmadge High Schools in Akron,
Ohio and was a sparring partner for a Golden Gloves
Champion. He has been trained as a "cut man" by
boxing legend the late-Johnny Tocco of Las Vegas.
Grandmaster Bendell has trained with others and has
created his own style of Jujitsu, called Shita
Jujtsu, meaning "the
fulfilling gentle art," which is a
combination of US Army Special Forces Combat
Jujitsu, Kodokan Jujitsu, and Small-Circle Jujitsu,
made famous by Professor Wally Jay. His primary
and only recognized instructor for close to four
decades is former World Champion and Hall of Fame
Black Belt Grandmaster Bob Chaney of Temecula,
California.
After an
11-year marriage to his first wife, Linda, ended in
1979, but with three wonderful children, a son
and 2 daughters, Don, in 1980, achieved a lifelong
goal and successfully raised the financing, wrote,
produced, directed, and co-starred in the low budget
martial arts action motion picture THE INSTRUCTOR,
which was eventually successfully-released in 1984
worldwide by Shapiro Entertainment Corporation of
Hollywood and by Vestron Video and sold to and
featured in 164 countries around the world. Don
jokes that the feature brought in very little money
for him but plenty for his Hollywood distributor,
but it did provide him and Shirley with PhD's in
Hard Knocks in every aspect of the motion picture
business.
In 1981, Don
married his wife Shirley and adopted her three
sons. They moved to southern Colorado in 1982,
where Don achieved another lifelong goal and became
an American cowboy, which he still is today. In 1984
and 1985, he became a Colorado licensed big game
guide and outfitter, but during it all, he still
taught the martial arts and worked on film projects.
In 1989, Don and Shirley were going to go into
business with friend world famous stuntman Dar
Robinson. Dar was so respected that the Mel
Gibson/Danny Glover film LETHAL WEAPON was dedicated
to Dar. The three were going to make
action/adventure films with Don writing and
directing, Shirley producing, and Dar doing amazing
stunts and second unit directing. Sadly, Dar was
tragically killed after
doing a stunt in the DeLaurentis film Million-Dollar
Mystery. In 1989, Don left the film business and
started writing books, which he still does today,
and written about in his short bio, but he and
Shirley made a commitment to return to the film
business. In the meantime, Don has used his spare
time sometimes to track missing people, animals, or
fugitives. This also gives him more ammunition for
his books and screenplays. In the summer of 2002,
Don wrote, directed, and starred in a one-hour
television pilot entitled COWBOY, which featured
special guest stars Rex Allen, Jr. and Buck Taylor.
Don's family still has two karate schools, Bendell
Karate in Canon City and Pueblo West, which Don runs
and teaches at, with Shirley's help, and a dozen
dedicated black belt instructors. He has a Master of
Science in Leadership from Grand Canyon University,
the Ken Blanchard College of Business, and Bachelor
of Science in Organizational Management with
emphasis on Management of Human Resources, Colorado
Christian University. Most of Don's time
is still spent writing, oft-times, until the wee
hours of the morning "when the phones have stopped
ringing."
Don and Shirley
love to pack up their horses and camp, fish, and
hunt high in the Colorado Rockies. They also
love to go dancing, and they travel a lot. Don's six
children are in their thirties and forties, and he
has nine grand-children, having lost two other
grand-daughters previously. His oldest son is a
successful business owner in Durango, Colorado;
one daughter is an artist and interior decorator in
Raleigh, NC and used to be a Christian missionary
in
India and Africa converting Muslims into Christians; another
daughter is an executive with Sara Lee Corporation
in Winston-Salem, NC and used to be an
editor/director with CNN news in Atlanta; another
son manages a men’s clothing store in Pinehurst, NC
and is a PGA golfer; and two sons are decorated NCO’s in the US Army Special Forces (the Green
Berets). A recovering alcoholic for over four
decades, Don has helped many alcoholics and drug
addicts get into recovery programs, and their
families into 12-step programs as well. He also
works with Montagnard refugee assistance, and has
spent a lot of time on veterans issues and exposing
phony veterans and fake war heroes assisting the
POWNetwork.org. Don is also a rabid Denver Broncos
fan and is active in conservative politics,
appearing on Fox News Live with an interview by
Martha McCallum in 2004. Don
and Shirley Bendell are the first and only couple in
history to both be inducted into the International
Karate and Kickboxing Hall of Fame.
He and Shirley own the
pristine Strongheart Ranch south of Florence,
Colorado in a beautiful mountain valley and have 8 horses, a small herd of red angus cattle,
including a bull Don named Benicio Del Toro, 3 large dogs, a bunch
of peacocks and peahens, and 7 cats.
