DeMile is of mixed race ancestry. He reportedly experienced a difficult childhood in an orphanage, with a history of teenage gang fights and petty crimes. He started boxing in the Air Force and trained hand to hand combat in the Special Forces Combative program in Fort Lewis from 1985 to 1986. He was Deputy Sheriff with the Ottawa County, Ohio, Sheriff's Department until 2005.
The Seattle Period
In April 1959, Bruce Lee's parents decided to send him to the United States. He moved to Seattle, Washington in 1959 to continue his high school education and started to teach martial arts. Lee called what he taught Jun Fan Gung Fu. It was basically his approach to Wing Chun. Lee started teaching friends in Seattle, starting with Jesse Glover and DeMile joined shortly after. DeMile went back to school at Edison Technical School after being arrested for a petty crime, which according to him was a definite turning point in his life. Not only because of his meeting Bruce Lee, but because of his new found interest in psychology. One day DeMile joined a crowd of spectators to watch the sharply dressed Chinese student perform a peculiar martial arts demonstration. The student was Lee and he billed the demonstration as “deadly Asian fighting techniques", DeMile was amused and skeptical. At one point during the performance, Lee feared he was losing the crowds interest, so he called DeMile “You look like you can fight,” Lee said. “Hit me as hard as you can.” DeMile weighed close to one hundred pounds more than Lee. Being on probation at the time, DeMile was worried he might hurt him badly and get in trouble, but finally obliged. He threw a jab, but at the same moment, Bruce redirected the punch and trapped his hands using a lop sau and collapsed his arms on his chest. DeMile recounted years later: Bruce Lee then began tapping on DeMile’s head asking, “Hello? Is anybody home?” Humbled DeMile quickly realized he could learn from Lee. In the book Disciples of the Dragon, DeMile stated that they we’re all dummies for Lee’s training. One of the reasons Lee modified his Wing Chung techniques and created Jeet Kune Do, was because the westerners were bigger and stronger than him and once they would learn the basics of Wing Chung, they could become a real threat to him.
