Count Dante
American martial artist (1939–1975)
Count Juan Raphael Dante (born John Timothy Keehan; February 2, 1939 – May 25, 1975) was an American martial artist figure during the 1960s and 1970s who claimed he could do extraordinary feats such as Dim Mak.
Early career
Keehan was born in Beverly, Chicago, on February 2, 1939, to a well-to-do Irish American family. His father, Jack, was a physician and director of the Ashland State Bank, and his mother, Dorothy, occasionally appeared on the society pages of the Chicago Tribune. Keehan attended Mount Carmel High School and boxed at Johnny Coulon's 63rd Street gym, and after graduating from high school he joined the Marine Reserves and later the Army, where he learned hand-to-hand combat and jujitsu techniques. He trained under various martial arts masters during the infancy of Western interest in Asian martial arts during the 1950s. One of the early masters he trained under was sensei Robert Trias. After gaining his black belt in karate, Keehan went on to become a sensei himself.
Keehan was the Midwest director of the United States Karate Association (USKA) until 1962. He left that organization in 1964 to form a so-called World Karate Federation. In 1990, a new World Karate Federation unassociated with Keehan's was formed.
“Count Dante” enters the record as american martial artist (1939–1975). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Count, Dante and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Count Dante” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Count, Dante and American provides the most credible route into that argument.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5176649. VIAF identifies the subject as 310721445. The Library of Congress control number is no2014121816. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1939, 1975, 1962 and 1964.
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This entry incorporates text from “Count Dante” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.