3:08AM April 28th, 2026

My dad visiting Colorado for our joint birthday in April 2016, wearing his beloved Chicago Blackhawks hat, visiting the trains he so loved.

Dad.

Scorno.

My dad’s name was Donald but throughout my childhood I could have sworn his name was Scorno, because that’s what everyone called him.

Yesterday while I was teaching the advanced kids class I got the phone call I was waiting for but never wanted to receive.

On Monday April 27th, 2026 at 4:12PM MST my middle-sister Jill called to tell me our father died five minutes earlier, lying next to his wife of 62 years, Barbara, and surrounded by five of his six children, in the midst of those who loved him.

I know he would have considered himself the luckiest man on earth.

My dad had a tough, tragic childhood, most of which I will never know about. I do know it was traumatic and that he carried emotional wounds well into

Dad and his accordion

adulthood. One bit I do know is that he used to lug his accordion onto Chicago Public Transportation to play for money and donations.

In spite of how he was mistreated as a a child, my dad never let the negativity, neglect, and abuse turn him into what he experienced.

Most people grow up only to become the same as the people who maltreated them as children, to perpetuate a cycle of neglect and cruelty.

My dad was not like that, he didn’t let the way he was treated turn him bitter or mean. He broke that cycle by staying true to himself and to the teachings of his role model, Jesus Christ.

Through it all he never stopped being who he was — he remained kind, the kindest person I have ever known.

He was 27 by the time I made my debut, and I grew up watching him perform small, daily kindnesses for everyone he could, at every chance he had, such as shoveling the snow off our elderly neighbor Mildred’s sidewalk, without ever asking for or expecting anything in return.

After he served four years in the navy, he returned to civilian life to find work and provide for his growing family.

He was not meant for the financial field which he found himself working in. He was not nearly cold-blooded enough nor ruthless enough to succeed there. At one point later in his career, he found work as a mortgage broker, and foundered because he so wanted to help people that he wouldn’t turn them down for a loan.

I blindly followed him into that dog-eat-dog field but I faced a hard choice when I realized what it was going to make of of me — the opposite of who my dad, my role model, was. (SIDE NOTE: My brother also went into that field and turned out pretty good. 🙂  )

My choice as a young adult was between making that money or making myself become more like my dad.

I wanted to be more like him, so I left and pursued a career in martial arts, not to be a tough guy but because I thought that being in a career where each day I was working to help and to protect people who might be hurt, taken advantage of, or left behind — to prevent them from going through any of what he experienced — would bring me closer to my dad, to his soul, and to his ideal of being kind of instead of cruel, always, regardless of what others did.

With six kids to provide for and his mother-in-law down the block to take care of, my dad couldn’t escape the environment he spent his life in. Yet, with the constant help of his wife, who worked 11pm-7:30am overnight shifts at a local bank clearing checks, they made it work.

I was raised in that same place. I could have easily become someone very different, someone I would not ever want to be. One of my closest childhood friends, who lived across the street, was shot and killed in an act of gang violence. I heard he wasn’t totally innocent, and that could been me if not for my dad’s and mom’s guidance, and for them finally letting me take martial arts after years of begging.

The training was my way of facing the cruelty of the South Side of Chicago and surviving it, of taking the meanness and the selfishness, the anger and the aggression that such a life offered and transmuting it (not always successfully, I freely admit to having failed far more than I have succeeded ) into connection and compassion.

For me, martial arts has always been about fighting the battles of the baser parts of human nature, of my own nature, to release its better angels, and to somehow become what came so effortlessly to my dad.

When it looked like my dad would have no male grandchildren to carry on his name I did the only thing I could think of to honor him, I re-named my martial arts school from Take Action Family Karate to Scornavacco Family Karate (now Scornavacco Martial arts Academy).

It wouldn’t have mattered much if his last name was something common like, Smith, but with such an unusual name like, Scornavacco ,it seemed like the right thing to do.

I didn’t name the school for myself, I named it for him, and for him to see that his life was affecting so many others through his son.

It’s his name I strive to live up to every time I step onto the mat to teach.

Whenever students would write letters about how the school has helped them I would read them to my dad over the phone, so he could see the legacy he was leaving.

Every time I see the name, on the backs of uniforms, in an email, or on the sign out front, I think of my dad. For years I went by “Mr. Brad” because, to me, Mr. Scornavacco was always my dad.

My uncle Buzzy, who was one of his closest friends, called me last night and told me what everyone who met my dad knew,“your dad was a kind man.”

My dad wasn’t a great man, he was better than that, he was a good man.

Rest in Peace, Dad, Thank You and I Love You.

5:43AM April 28th, 2026

Dad, Mom, and Brad April 12th, 2026