Roy E. Day, Jr. is known professionally as Master Roy Day, the 2017, 2018 and 2021 ISKA US Open/World Champion in adaptive Karate and a two-time Grand Champion at the Battle of Atlanta in weapons and forms. Master Day has always been a person with many passions throughout his lifetime: mysticism, the martial arts, shamanism, scuba diving, and motorcycles. Master Day was a high school soccer star who just four months after graduation fell the equivalent of seven stories in an industrial demolition accident that took two lives. Within a year of his injury he was introduced to Karate and the invisible but prevalent problem of crime against the disabled. He studied with Okinawan-trained Karate Master Jack Johns learning control of both the body and the mind. Day trained, went to college, coached soccer, wrote, and studied spiritual healing. As a young man Day met Ruth Stillman, a deeply spiritual, highly respected Esoteric Section-trained Theosophist fifty years his senior. She opened up the world of mysticism to Day, and introduced him to author Eve Eaton who wrote three of her twenty-four books about her journey into shamanism. Eaton invited Day to the Owens Valley where Roy met the esteemed Northern Paiute Medicine Man Grandfather Raymond Stone and attended his Sweat Lodge and the one at the Tule River Reservation. Day spent three extremely intense years training to be a Medicine Man/healer with Grandmother Eve Eaton and Grandfather Raymond Stone going through the Northern Paiute Sweat Lodge rituals.
In December 1995, he was introduced to wheelchair fencing. In 1997, he was the U.S. National Champion in Men’s Wheelchair Epee Fencing and competed for the U.S. in the 1998 and 2002 World Championships. He was a member of the 2000 US Olympic/Paralympic Team that competed in the Sydney Games and later went to the White House and met President Clinton. After the Games Roy went to Cairns and as a certified scuba diver had four life-changing dives experiencing the profound beauty of the Great Barrier Reefs. He has written eight books: his anthropology thesis on shamanism, The Phoenix Trilogy – an autobiography in three books of poetry, a shamanic novel, an encyclopedic approach to the subject of crime and the disabled, and his We Defend System of Self-Defense training manual. His latest book is drawn from his own personal experience defeating bladder cancer. Master Day used the ketogenic diet to defeat cancer, in unison with the best of modern medicine, and a combination of physical and psychological exercises. His pen names are: Master Roy Day, Roy E. Day Jr., R. E. Day Jr. and R. E. Day. With the exception of his newest book, all his books come in a large coffee table size and all are available as both physical books and e-books on Amazon, Lulu, and other sites. Master Day has also gotten two patents on the wheelchair accessible motorcycle he invented and is currently searching for a company that will put it into mass-production. It can be seen on YouTube as “Master Roy’s Wheelchair Accessible Motorcycle.” His websites are thewedefendsystem.org and theshamanpoet.com.
In 1998, Roy began studying Kenpo Karate with the late Master Robert Quinn at what is now the Tucker Martial Arts Academy in Atlanta, which he has managed for the last five years. He spent over a decade with Mr. Quinn earning his 3rd degree Black Belt, a Master ranking, and was an instructor in his Sifu’s Tactical Emergency Security Training program. Under Master Quinn’s guidance, Day developed Ropo Kenpo (the rolling power of Kenpo used in the We Defend System) and completed his book Crime and the Disabled, an encyclopedia on the subject.