Mr. Jimmy Bruce Higgins
5th Dan Tukong Moosul

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Mr. Higgins was born on Valentine's Day in Las Cruses, New Mexico.  The only one in a family of 7 that was not born in Texas.  Mr. Higgins has 4 sisters and parents who live in Austin, Texas.  It was there that  he started his martial arts training.

Mr. Higgins started training Tae Kwon Do.  Due to his physical abilities and practice he was promoted after only 3 days to Yellow Belt. One week later, he was involved in an accident that stopped his training.  Almost a year later, Mr. Higgins began training with one of the original Tukong Grandmasters, Won Ik Yi who had moved to Austin after leaving the South Korean Army. 

While attending the University of Texas, Mr. Higgins again trained hard and was unprecedentedly double and quadruple promoted at times because of his diligence and hard practice, as well as, his support of the Tukong school there in Austin.  Mr. Higgins was instrumental in helping the school become one of the largest schools in the nation. Grandmaster Won Ik Yi trained him privately as they worked closely to formulate what later became the Tukong Moosul Federation. 

Mr. Higgins was awarded the position of "White Tiger Instructor" after only 14 months to teach the very best of the Tukong School.  The White Tiger students, studying with Mr. Higgins, all double promoted and won gold in many tournaments.   "It was less of my teaching abilities and more their motivation and hard work," Mr. Higgins says. 

After training very hard to try out for the 1988 U.S. Olympic Team, Mr. Higgins was told he would not be able to even compete in the trials because he was not a Black Belt in the proper TKD association. It seemed America's best athletes would also have to have already paid many thousands of dollars to certain associations and organizations to have the right to even try to get a spot on the U.S. Olympic Team.  Mr. Higgins later left the Austin Tukong school to work on his passion of commercial space development for energy production in Dallas.

Mr. Higgins met Tukong Grandmaster In Ki Kim when Grandmaster Kim came to Austin to visit with Tukong Grandmaster Yi.  They became very close as Grandmaster Kim taught Mr. Higgins even more Tukong training. He has been training with Grandmaster Kim since 1987.

Mr. Higgins currently lives in Alexandria, Virginia where he teaches Tukong classes and is a Co-Founder of the American Martial Arts Academy.  During the day, Mr. Higgins is a Web Developer for the Nasdaq Stock Market (www.nasdaq.com).  At night, he teaches Tukong as well as,  "SmartForce Training" classes or computer classes (beginning computer, Web Site Design and Construction, programming, Internet introduction, Online Stock & Options Investing) at The Academy.   He is also a certified realtor and has a small software development start up company.

Mr. Higgins is looking forward to developing the Academies as more Masters come to be retrained to teach Tukong and learn computers (the modern martial artists weapon of choice). His personal goal is to make a difference in developing leaders for America's future that have character and high standards of excellence.  "Leaders start out as children and young adults.  Tukong and computers will give them the confidence and skills to be the leaders our country needs for the future."

During his travels, Mr. Higgins has starred in a small film, danced the Nutcracker with the Austin Civic Ballet, made 3 citizen's arrests, spoken with Senator John Glenn, Former Apollo Astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Deke Slaton, Billionaire Ross Perot, and several not so well known persons about commercial space development. He has proposed a new Time standard he calls Metric Time. Mr. Higgins hopes to one day have a very large family and teach his children Tukong and computers.