"In 2004 I began to accompany my son to his Tae Kwon Do instruction. Master Dan Dorton was teaching a Combat Hapkido class in the same facility and I started to watch the group work out. I immediately saw the utility of a simple, relatively low impact martial art with applicability to real world situations. As I watched the students I understood that this form would give me the skills to deal with a wide range of situations without escalating the situation by using Army skills that were focused more on causing life threatening damage.

"Within a month I started attending lessons with Master Dorton. During the last 2.5 years I have enjoyed improving my skills while enjoying the camaraderie that Master Dorton instills in his students. He proved to be a very patient and effective instructor and worked tirelessly with both gifted students and those who required a bit more attention to ensure that various techniques were mastered.

"Master Dorton kept the class interesting by adding both weapons training and defense against gun/knife along with the normal instruction. Master Dorton encouraged us to challenge ourselves as we moved through the belt progression and focused on ensuring that we understood the techniques and were able to correctly execute them on a variety of body types. He was clearly not focused on moving students to higher levels until they were ready and could demonstrate the proper mastery of the techniques.

"I have enjoyed my relationship with Master Dorton and Combat Hapkido and have gained more awareness in normal everyday situations and am confident that I could deal with a wide range of unpleasant situations with a proper controlled use of my skills. Perhaps the most rewarding part of class for me has been the ability to work with other students to experiment with techniques and teach each other those things that we might understand better than someone else."

 Mr. Kirk Burton is a technology consultant to the U.S. Special Operations Command.  He retired from the U.S. Army in 2005 as a Lieutenant Colonel serving more than 23 years in Infantry and Special Forces units.  During his last deployment prior to retiring, then LTC Burton served as the Deputy Commander of Joint Special Operations Task Force Arabian Peninsula, with responsibility for joint and coalition special operations in Iraq.