008 Surprise and Tragedy
Life in Fundamental Christianity is always punctuated by doubts about whether you are good enough. But I threw myself into my work as a graduate assistant in Bible college. I loved teaching. I loved studying graduate-level English. I loved my students. And I feared the dean of our school. He was a bully and a small tyrant, and I was still young enought to be afraid of men like him.So my first year was a mixed bag. But I knew I wanted to continue in Billy Hong's school. I had no car to get there, no money, and my first year in graduate school was complicated when my father died. He was Italian Roman Catholic, and his last demand on me was that I give up my Protestantism and return to the Church. I declined, and he disinherited me and disowned me: a separation from his side of the family that would last for the rest of my life, all the way to the writing of this story.
The next summer I returned to Tae kwon do training, but instead of attending Mr. Hong's main school, I attended one of the branch schools, which was less expensive. I was working a 40 hour week for low pay, but it was more than I'd gotten as a grad assistant. And a woman black belt at the branch school gave me rides each week. But again, I missed the scheduled test.
As the hot August days drew to a close, my graduate school duties (and salary) resumed. I had to drop out of Tae kwon do again.
Just after my second year as an English teacher started, Mr. Hong won an amateur golf tournament. His prize was round trip tickets to Korea aboard the Korean airliner KAL 007.
As the days came closer for him to take the flight to Korea, Mr. Hong became more morose and withdrawn. He had declared that it would be better for one of his business friends to accompany him on his trip than his wife. She would stay in South Carolina with the children.
At a Friday night class a few days before his trip, Mr. Hong was impatient with his black belt students, angry with them, and disappointed that they lacked heart and spirit. He told all of the students below black belt to leave. And then he locked the doors, lined up his black belt students, and shouted at them, rebuking them as he had never done before for having poor spirit. One man later told me that Mr. Hong said this as he berated them:
"I am the teacher!" he shouted at them. "I do what I am told! Like a dog if my master tells me! That should be your attitude. If I say die, you should die!"
Then he called the senior black belt student, Bull Beringer, to come to the front of the room. Bull Beringer, a great bear-like man with a barrel chest, dwarfed Billy Hong. Beringer was about six foot four and was massive. He was a third degree black belt at the time.
"Bend over!" Mr. Hong shouted at him, and Beringer obeyed him. Mr. Hong took up an oak stick, swung it like a baseball bat, and struck Beringer so hard that he knocked him over. The blow was so severe against the top of Beringer' leg that Beringer could not stand up.
"Get up! Get up!" Mr. Hong shouted at him.
Legs shaking, Beringer at last got up.
"Do you want another?" Mr. Hong asked him.
"No sir," Mr. Beringer said.
"Then you get out. You take another or you get out!"
"Well, I don't want another one, but I don't want to leave," Bull Beringer said, and he bent over again to be hit. Mr. Hong only tapped him with the stick, and then he shouted at everybody to get out. The black belts hurriedly gathered up clothing and scurried out the door. But they stood on the steps outside, talking. One by one, each went back inside and humbly asked Mr. Hong if he had been the one who had disgraced or offended him.
"You don't understand. You don't understand," Mr. Hong said to one of them. But at last he was reconciled to them, and he went with them to the school's favorite eating place, Ryan's Steakhouse.
At the restaurant, Mr. Hong seemed more like his old self, laughing and talking, but he said suddenly to them, "Students at the school should always wear white. White uniform. For purity and integrity. No letters on the back."
Everybody nodded. He stayed with them a long time, telling stories. They finally broke up and everybody said good night.
News came the next week that flight KAL 007 had never landed. It had been shot down by Russian fighter pilots for trespassing into Russian air space.
Mr. Hong was a local celebrity, and so the news teams in Greenville traveled to the school to interview the black belts. They said little; they were still in shock. In the following week, a memorial service was held, and Mr. Hong's black belt, now faded to gray, was hung up in the school.
Everything I've related about the final days of Billy Hong is only hearsay. I wasn't there, and this is only what I have been told by those who were there. Details may vary, but everybody agrees that he was angry and upset his last night at the school, that he did strike his beloved and respected senior student, and that he specifically said that our colors must remain white.
People still debate over flight KAL 007. Was it really spying? The Russians said it was taking pictures of their air craft.
I think it was. I think Mr. Hong knew it was. He'd had ties with the CIA in his younger days, and he was an ardent foe of Communism. I could be wrong; it's only my opinion. At the time, what deeply impressed me was the tragedy to his wife and two young children and the question of what would happen to the tae kwon do school.
I was in my last year of graduate school, and there was no money for me to attend tae kwon do training, but I decided that once I had graduated, gotten a job, and paid off some things, that I would go back. I was still a white belt, and yet I felt the urgency of going and becoming a part of that school and trying to preserve what Mr. Hong had started. My doubts and reservations were gone. I honored my brown belt in Shotokan, but even if a school had offered to recognize it, I would have turned down the offer. I wanted to be at Hong's. I wanted to get my black belt from Hong's Tae Kwon Do School.
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