Edwin M Cruz was born in Brooklyn, NY. He started martial arts with Tae Kwon Do, ITF style at age 13, and achieved a black belt 3 years later at age 16. He always wanted to learn kung fu but the schools were too far away for my mother to let me go. At 16, Sifu Cruz found Grandmaster Yee Shum Leung’s Ying Jow Eagle Claw school in Manhattan, NY, and I fell in love with it. He trained consistently with Grandmaster Shum until he was 21 years old. at which time he enlisted in the United States Army. His first duty station was in Germany, and periodically he would take leave return to NY and train at the NYC school twice a year. He did this for 6 years.

Upon his reassignment to the states after subsequent overseas tours, he was stationed in Georgia. He restarted his Ying Jow study with Sifu Joel Rodriguez, Sifu Aronson’s soul brother and best friend from Ying Jow, at his school in Atlanta, GA. He trained with Sifu Rodriguez until his passing in 2010, and since 2020 has been training under Sifu Michael Aronson.