- December 4, 2025
Thirty years ago, Stan Lee ran into a former student at a grocery store.
A couple years before, Lee had taught the adult student at a martial arts school in Daytona Beach and he told Lee that he had saved his life, referencing an instance when the student had come to class with alcohol on his breath. Lee had pulled him aside, gave him a talk on how that was unacceptable and was setting a bad example for his children and his family.
The student told Lee that changed his life. He stopped drinking, got himself in shape and earned his black belt.
That’s when Lee — who was working odd jobs ranging from construction work and bouncer to a loss prevention officer and running a telemarketing room — realized he needed to get back into the martial arts world.
“At that moment is when I realized that I needed to open my own school and get back into teaching,” Lee said. “Because when I was a bouncer or running a telemarketing room, no one was thanking me for saving their life. That was like the pivotal moment when I decided, obviously this is what I have a talent for. This is what I should be doing.”
So in 1995, Lee started teaching martial arts out of the Ormond Beach YMCA. Within three months, he had 35 students, and that was enough for him to rent his first commercial space for Stan Lee’s United Martial Arts at the former Ormond Tech Center on the beachside.
A few years later, he relocated to the Renaissance plaza on South Nova Road, and following the 2008 real estate crash, he moved to his current location in Ormond Beach downtown district, at 11 S. Washington St.
Now, Stan Lee’s United Martial Arts will celebrate its 30th anniversary from 4-9 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 4. The event will feature live music, food trucks, a free bully proof class for kids 4-12 years old, an alumni reunion and black belt tests.
Since opening his school, Lee said he’s taught about 4,000 people in his programs for children, adults, afterschool students and summer camps. It’s not unusual for him to pop in as his staff teaches an introductory class and have a parent greet him, letting him know he or she is a former student of Lee’s.
That’s a significant takeaway of his three decades of teaching, Lee said.
“Five-star Google reviews are great, but what is a more powerful testimonial to your life’s work is when an adult says, ‘I want my child to have the same skills you taught me. It helped me to be successful in life, and I want them to be just as successful,’” Lee said. “That to me is, at this 30-year point, what stands out — how incredible that is that we built this family environment where I’m like a grandfather.”
All of his instructors were his former students too.
Chief instructor Tyler Whitby started taking classes with Lee when he was 7. As a kid, he enjoyed martial arts but never envisioned becoming an instructor until after he came back to the school following his high school graduation.
“I decided to take a drive up here and reconnect with my old instructor, and he had said, ‘We’ve been looking to hire somebody to help teach around here,’” Whitby said. “That was the first time I really considered teaching martial arts and that was, we’re talking almost 12 years ago now that I decided I was going to teach here and train to try and get my black belt.”
Two years after that, he did get his black belt, and teaching has become a passion.
Knowing that United Martial Arts is celebrating 30 years is surreal, Whitby said. The school has been around for as long as Whitby has been alive, he added, and he hopes that the school continues to help instill confidence and discipline in students.
“We want to make sure everybody is who they’re meant to be and has the means to protect themselves as much as they possibly can,” Whitby said.
Self-defense has always been at the core of United Martial Art’s classes. That’s where Lee’s passion lies, and has ever since he was a Pennsylvania kid who turned to martial arts to protect himself from bullies who didn’t like his sarcastic wit.
The martial arts industry saw a rise in popularity with the “Karate Kid” movies in the 1980s, and Lee said that’s when people realized the character development aspect of martial arts was equally as important as the physical moves.
"I felt it was important to have a balance between the two," Lee said. "I can't make somebody
good at all these martial arts moves and not teach them philosophy alongside it. If you're not teaching people to be honest and to be leaders and to be good people, you can't make them more dangerous — that's a recipe for catastrophe. So we've always done our best to balance our focus on character development and self-protection."
After 30 years, the legacy of his school is important. He hopes to be remembered as someone who led by example and inspired people to live safer, better lives.
"I want to make sure that this place doesn't fade from existence without me," Lee said. "So training our staff to continue to provide that five-star service to Ormond Beach families, that would be probably the most important thing."
Visit ormondbeachmartialarts.com.
