The Tae Kwon Do Memoirs by Jeri Massi (2005)

Next update scheduled for this weekend

I've received some e-mails and hard copy mails from former students of Hong's. They have provided additional information for me, so I want to work the new info into the storyline. I hope to add the next chapter this weekend, Lord willing, October 22. Thanks for your patience!

posted by Jeri @ 5:07 AM  

016 Competing

For me, the journey to black belt was very much a journey of physical fitness. I took an aerobics class for two semesters in a row. After the first four weeks, it made a difference. At first I had to stagger tae kwon do classes to give me a chance to recover from the aerobics, but as the weeks passed I resumed a three-times a week tae kwon do schedule, interspersed with two classes of high impact aerobics that lasted an hour each.

I was still losing weight, and I did notice that being lighter also made the difficult kicks and the jumps less difficult.

Professionally, I had achieved a lifetime goal when I published my first book, a fairly forgettable children's adventure called Derwood Incorporated. By the time the draft got through the editing at the religious publisher that produced it, most of the jokes and humor had been fairly well eradicated from it, but it was still billed as a comedy adventure. And though I wasn't impressed with it, the publisher wanted another one, and so I began the next in the series. Over the next six years I would sell 13 novels to this publisher.

If life has any "golden years," I suppose that mine began then. One drawback was that, just when I had my head together and had shaken off my past, and was now ready to really play and have a good time, all my friends were settling down and getting married. I knew I wasn't ready for marriage and had no interest in it whatsoever. Men, to me, were pals and were useful as highly efficient insect killers and furniture movers. In fact, my apparent inability to commit the sin of lust used to worry me. But for all that sex or romance appealed to me, I might as well have been 11 years old. Writing adventure stories gave me great pleasure, and I loved working out in tae kwon do. And it was compensation that even as old friends got married off and moved away, I was meeting new friends. I was having a great time.

But it all came down to Hong's. I began to free spar in earnest, and I entered competitions. Tournaments were held in high school gyms, and the "rings" were regulation-sized squares marked by tape on the floor. These were the last days of the old style tournaments, when the fights were called light contact but were full contact, and the only protection was mouthpieces and shin guards. In the last year before the WTF mandated comprehensive protective equipment, the tae kwon do tournaments adopted the rubberized, lightweight gloves and foot shields made popular by the PKA competitions.

As far as the men were concerned, they may as well have just wrapped their hands in plastic wrap. And women tended not to go for knockouts, anyway. I certainly didn't. I hated the thought of knocking somebody senseless. I really did want to work on technique and kicks.

I did enter one tournament in which one of the girls, who was an inch taller than I and heavier, wrapped her gloves with duct tape. When I asked her why, she said the gloves were ripped. One of the other girls clued me in as I sat down on the sidelines.

"Duct tape sticks," she told me. "If that girl hits you in the face, it'll stick. The glove won't slide off."

I immediately complained to the referee about this and insisted that the gloves be thrown out. He got angry with me and told me to sit down and be quiet. And then she and I were called up first to fight.

The very first time she punched me, I thought a locomotive had run between my eyes. It threw me around and dropped me to the floor. The referee helped me up and asked if I was okay. I think he was humiliated, but he still didn't throw the gloves out. I said yes, I was fine, and I went back to it.

I learned a lot about fighting in the next twenty seconds. Again and again she almost had me knocked out by those sledge hammer punches. I think that the only thing that kept me up was that I was so mad at her for cheating that I refused to go down.

And then, suddenly, I realized that every time she hit me, she only hit once. She had no combinations. As I staggered towards her, I used an old trick from basketball and waved my gloved hand right in her face. Next thing I knew, I was inside. She couldn't touch me. Jab, jab, backfist, all right on her nose.

She staggered back. I was right on top of her. I knew if I backed up, she'd slam me again. Jab jab backfist. I followed her around the ring, crowding her. Somehow she got distance, and I saw that duct tape glove coming at me. WHAM!

My vision got red, but I didn't go back. I rushed her again and kept up the light fast patter on her face. I was hitting fast, not hard. Quickfire, hard hitting punches were still years away for me. I could do one or the other, but not both.

This time when I saw the glove I ducked and for the first time in my life, I threw a left cross. Full force, it hit her high on the cheek bone, and she fell back. The ref got between us.

"Now, now girls, this is just for a trophy," he said. I could have killed him. The time for that speech was before the match, when he should have been throwing those blasted gloves away. He stepped back, and she slammed me in the face again. And then I was on her with the rain of right jabs and backfist strikes.

At the end of three grueling minutes, the match was declared a tie, and we were given a minute to rest. Most of the girls were on my side, and as I sank to the floor, one of them said, "If you can just kick her, you'll win. They want you to kick more."

She was right. The problem was that by now my head and feet felt like lead.

But as we were called back in, I shakily threw a kick that actually did tap the side of her jaw. And then we were back to our slugfest. But in the final few seconds, I did control the match. I was declared the winner.

And then I saw her pass the gloves to her sister, who was also very tall and very powerfully built.

I fell back onto the floor, exhausted. The haze of red over my vision gradually cleared away. Oh good, I thought. I would live. Brain still intact and both retinas still attached.

There was another match between two of the lighter weight girls, and then I was called in against Little Sister. And Little Sister had the duct tape gloves. We bowed in.

She rushed right at me, leaning too far forward, and threw a tremendous roundhouse punch at me that would have finished me. I ducked down as I slid back and then slammed a roundhouse kick right into her head as she was off balance. I used my instep rather than the ball of my foot as the striking surface, but she got the message. It threw her over sideways.

"Not so hard!" she exclaimed.

"You punch me in the face again, and I swear, I'll knock you out!" I exclaimed. "Do you understand me?"

She glanced at her sister, and then she meekly said, "Yes." Wisely, the ref said nothing.

It was a more moderate fight after that, and I won by a point.

There were more matches, and then I went up against a much lighter girl who was a lot smaller than I. She was very honest as we bowed in.

"Please, don't hurt me," she said.

"I don't want to hurt anybody," I told her. "Let's go light."

And we did. I still won by virtue of my superior reach. She was too small to get in on me and land much.

At the break, one of the women I had not fought came up and introduced herself as Arlene. "I really admire you for holding back on that little girl," she said. "That's how I like to fight. It ought to be skill, not brute strength. But I am glad you beat those two."

I introduced myself, and then I said, "Well, if you and I fight, let's agree to keep it light and fast and show some good technique." After all, what's the point in women relying so much on strength? Any physically fit man would hammer you into the ground on strength alone. A woman has to excel at technique, speed, and timing, with strength as one component of many.

She agreed. As it turned out, she and I were the finalists, and we fought for first place. After my bad experience with the first two girls, it was a reaffirmation to fight Arlene. We both stayed true to our agreement and spent our whole match trading kick combinations. We went fast and light, and the girls encouraged us both. We would even encourage each other and say things like "good shot!" when something landed. We went into three sudden death overtimes with each other but kept tying because when either of us landed anything, she would get successfully countered by the other. Finally, Arlene tagged me with a round kick, and that ended it. She took first place, and I took second, and one of the lighter weight girls took third.

I never saw Arlene again, but I'm always glad that I met her. As we received the trophies, one of the judges came up and shook hands with us. "You girls are examples of what tae kwon do should be," he said. "That was a great fight."

Almost everybody who had competed from Hong's had won trophies. But there was little time spent on congratulations. Come Monday, we were back in the training hall. It was one thing to excel against overweight girls who cheated by putting duct tape on their gloves. It was something else entirely to train with lean, fit people who had a passion for excellence and not for glory.

posted by Jeri @ 8:39 AM  

015 A Lesson from Susan

We never mentioned it to each other again. Susan stayed in training and worked with her same enthusiastic intensity. When we sparred she would get more on edge, more brittle with me than she had been before. That was the only difference.

The weeks went by. Nancy came back. She was polite to Susan and polite to me. I wondered if she had changed her mind about beating up Susan. She outweighed Susan and seemed more savvy about how to fight. If she really chose to hit Susan hard, I didn't think that lightweight, bouncy Susan could handle her.

More time passed, and the next test came up. Warren Elseman, oblivious to what was going on, matched the two of them together. Working as a pair, they demonstrated the basic kicks for him and the assembled onlookers. They did forms well, and they went through one step sparring.

I could see it in Nancy's eyes as he sent them off to get their mouthpieces. She was going to beat up Susan.

Watching the test from the rows of folding chairs, I moved to the front row, my hands knotted in anxiety. Susan suddenly seemed little and vulnerable. I love happy people, and I always do feel protective of them.

Nancy came out. The two women bowed to each other, and Nancy positively charged her, fists out.

Susan sidestepped and smacked a kick into Nancy's shoulder. It was not an effective kick, but it sure was quick. Startled, Nancy turned and came after her again, kicking with determination. Susan avoided the kick and turned. She threw a fast, explosive kick that glanced off Nancy's side, and then she pummeled Nancy with her fists and drove her off.

Startled but still confident, Nancy attacked again, and Susan, eyes set like blue ice, kicked her as she came in. Susan dodged when Nancy charged from too close, avoiding the weight that was greater than her own. But every time she got Nancy backed off to just the right distance, she kicked. And then she closed with the bigger girl and punched with her arms like pistons, driving Nancy off again and again. I also saw that Susan had an inborn gift that I lacked: a sense of proper distance. Susan instinctively moved herself or timed the movement of her opponent to the exact distance where she could land a kick or use punches. I always fought in terms of "openings" and then tried to cover distance. But Susan fought in terms of proper distance and used whatever openings she found.

She was driving off the bigger, more aggresssive girl again and again. It was too much. A test is not a tournament and is supposed to be conducted in a classroom atmosphere, but I suddenly yelled, "Go, Susan! Go Susan!"

Mr. Elseman was also deeply impressed. Susan had always shown skill and promise, but she had never been such a demon of war before. She remained defensive in the fight but her defense cost Nancy something every time Nancy came in. He let the match go on for longer than usual. At last, he clapped, and they bowed out. Sweating and puffing, their faces red, they turned from each other and faced him. Susan could see me, sitting right behind him in the front row, and she suddenly beamed at me, back to her bouncy and happy self. I grinned back. Later, I apologized to her for not realizing that she was so tough under all that bouncy and happy exterior. Typical of Susan, she laughed a bright, happy laugh and said, "Did I teach her a lesson?"

"Yeah," I said. She'd taught me a lesson, too. Happy people can be cool as ice and hard as nails. But they would rather just be happy.

posted by Jeri @ 8:26 AM  

014 Dominators and Other Losers

I settled in to a long, quiet study of fitness. I had always been average in my athletic abilities. Tall people actually fall outside of the curve of efficiency. We are not "well knit," and the longer levers of our arms and legs do compromise maximum strength and speed. As a man grows taller than about five foot seven or five foot eight, he leaves maximum efficiency behind him. Similarly, as a woman gets beyond five foot four or five foot five, she also is moving away from the optimum height for athletic efficiency.

The Koreans that we saw on tape or in person were the most startling example of efficient builds and precise accuracy. Korean instructors who visited did admit to us that they viewed Americans as big and ungainly. To them, Americans, even men, have large backsides and tend to be heavy set.

Big, bluff Bull Beringer, a bull of a man with rank equal to Warren Elseman, was barrel chested and had a voice like a bull horn. He was one of those men that make others shake their heads and say, "Why did he ever need to take a martial art?"

Huge, naturally muscular, and confident, Beringer overcame the size barrier by forcing himself to learn to be aerial. While still in the lower ranks, he practiced jumping again and again until he could fly through the air on jump kicks. I watched him once, doing jump back kicks against a full sized heavy bag. He'd rush forward, leap into the air and spin, and that massive foot would crash into the bag near the top seam. Each crashing kick sent the bag shooting and shaking the other way until the chain caught it. More than once in his career, Beringer had to re-drill the beam to reinstall the anchor chain because his kicks had jarred the anchor bolt back and forth so much that the hole had widened. He'd kick the bag, and it would suddenly fly free.

When he would spar with me, he would grin at me and roar, "Come on, Jeri! Right here! Right here!" and slap his own chest in the middle. "Come on! Kick hard!"

He did this when I was a white belt, and he does it now that I'm a third degree black belt and he's a fifth degree black belt. The sequence never varies. "Yes sir!" I yell, and I fling my foot at his chest. I hit him in the chest and then slide off the barrel surface. Unaffected by a side kick that can break three boards, he'll turn to face me, arms wide, to let me do it again and bellow, "Good! Good! Good spirit Miss Massi! That was a good kick! Come on! Come on!"

One night in the dressing room, four of us girls started imitating him and giggling. We paraded back and forth, arms wide. "Come on! Come on! Good spirit!" we called to each other, trying to make our voices deep and resonant like his. We didn't know that he could hear us in the next room. He pounded on the wall. "Girls, are you making fun of me?" the deep voice called.

"Imitation is the highest form of praise, sir!" I called back.

"Okay then! Keep at it!"

When he would come to the main school, all the black belts loved to fight him. For one thing, he was the only real challenge to some of the bigger men, and the smaller men could test themselves against him.

There were times, even when Mr. Hong was alive, when everybody would be called to a halt, and we would watch Mr. Beringer and Dr. Roberts spar, or Mr. Beringer and Linwood Cisco. The floor shook as two such heavyweights of speed and skill crashed about. I think that one reason the rest of the class was told to watch these matches was to make sure that nobody got run over by accident.
Nobody in his right mind would challenge the bull-like Beringer. But one night, at his own school, he had a man and his teen age son sign up for classes. Beringer always kept an eye on teenage boys. They can be the most unpredictable of students and sometimes hit too hard on smaller or weaker people.

But this young man seemed to be earnest and careful in his training. He obeyed quickly, got along well with Bull's wide variety of students, and was enthusiastic.

But Bull started to hear complaints, and some of his students started showing injuries. To his surprise, it was not the teenager who was bullying young men smaller or weaker than himself, but the boy's father. More than once, Beringer had to tell the man to go easier with the boys. Bull himself is such an example of gentleness wrapped around devastating power, that usually his word is enough.

This new student, a father himself, had seen Bull spar and had seen him on the heavy bag. He had also seen Bull exercise that great gentleness of his with the school's one or two elderly students and with the adolescent boys and girls who studied from him.
And yet, this adult student brushed aside Bull's orders to calm down, to be careful, to avoid deliberately injuring or humiliating another student. Finally, things came to a head when the adult hurt a younger man---a mere boy---of higher rank. Beringer ended class and sent everybody else to go get dressed.

They hurriedly cleared the room, knowing that Beringer was going to give the man a talking to. Even the man's son left.
"Now look," Beringer said to him. "I've told you before. You can't hit kids hard. They don't have the strength to fight you."
"Yeah, you've said it," the man said, his eyes and face deadpan.

"You know," Bull told him. "I don't like your attitude."

"Well, I don't like your attitude," the man said right back, glaring up at him.

Beringer flicked a glance at the full length mirror on the wall. Yes, this man who was berating him really was a foot shorter than he and weighed about 150 pounds less.

"In fact," the man said. "If you got anything to show me, you better show me now! Let's get this settled."

Bull couldn't resist another quick glance at the mirror. And then he looked the smaller man full in the face. "Are you challenging me?" he asked. His voice was surprised, rather than angry.

"Yes I am! I think you got nothing to back up your words!"

The scene had taken on a dream like quality, now. But Beringer said, "Then hit me if you want a fight."

The man threw a punch, and before it landed Beringer turned and kicked a light back kick into the man's chest, right on the sternum. The man flew back and hit the floor. Gasping, he rolled back and forth and tried to sit up. He at last managed to do so. He held his hands to his chest and tried to catch his breath.

"You all right?" Beringer asked.

The man nodded and then said, "I think so."

Beringer just stood and stared down at him, still not comprehending all that had happened. At last he said, "Well, I'm going to get dressed now. You take as long as you need." And he walked back to the dressing room. He heard the front door open and close, and when he came out, the man was gone. The fellow never returned.

Challenging and showing dominance occur more with men than with women. But it does occur with women. It seldom happens to me, because I'm simply too tall.

But when I was up at the first degree brown belt level, preparing for black belt, we had two girls of equal rank. One of them, Susan, had gone to college with me. She was pretty, slender, and very well coordinated. Susan was a "bouncer," an enthusiastic student who bounces through class. She loved kicking; she loved jumping, and she had endless energy. All of the single men liked to talk with her. Susan's vivaciousness and inborn happiness infected everybody. She did practice with intensity, but I do remember that once when the teacher asked her why she took tae kwon do, she drew a complete blank. She had no idea why she took it. Typical of the "bouncer," Susan threw herself into every new endeavor that held her fascination, and she did it whole heartedly. When women like Susan are asked that question, they usually default to the sensible answer of "Self Defense," but for them that's a pretty minor reason. They're too optimistic to seriously consider being attacked.

The other girl, Nancy, was loud and confident, like me. Also like me, she was more of a plodder through tae kwon do. She did better at strength than at speed, though with training her speed had improved. She had a lot of innate ability, and she was tremendously strong. She always treated me with respect, and I enjoyed working with her because she was ready to work hard and follow directions. When I sparred with her, I noticed that she was strong, but I have so much strength for a woman that it didn't ever alarm or challenge me.

Nancy and Susan were a year behind me, fourth degree brown belts preparing to test for third degree brown. One night, with her more deliberate, strength oriented way of sparring, Nancy blocked a kick from a man straight on. The result was that the kick shot past the arm into her ribs, and cracked them.

I'd had my own ribs cracked six months earlier, trying to block a jump kick, and I sympathized with her. When ribs are cracked but not cleanly broken, they do not present a serious danger, but they are painful. You can't comfortably sneeze, cough, or clear your throat. And you can't train for at least six weeks. Jumping jacks alone would have you rolling around in agony.

"I'm sorry," I told her in the dressing room. "I think you're going to miss the test."

"I know." She let out a moan. "Darn! And I was so ready!"

"Yeah, you really were." I helped her by stuffing her clothes into her gym bag, "But lay out for a few weeks and then come back. You'll get it next time."

"But you know, I was really looking forward to fighting Susan. I knew I could beat the shit out of her!"

I stopped and stared. "What?" I asked.

She turned innocent eyes to me. "Don't you think I could?" she asked.

"I don't think anybody should beat that out of anybody," I told her honestly. "We're all friends here."

"I'm not friends with anybody I fight," she said earnestly.

I dropped the gym bag. "Okay. Well, I'll see you in six weeks."

I found Susan and told her what Nancy had said. Susan's blue eyes lit up in amazement. For a moment she looked frightened, but then she was simply puzzled.

"What do you want to do?" I asked her.

"I don't know," she said.

"Do you want me to go to Mr. Elseman?"

"No!" And suddenly the blue eyes were angry. "I'll handle it myself."

"Okay,"

We never mentioned it to each other again. Susan stayed in training and worked with her same enthusiastic intensity. When we sparred she would get more on edge, more brittle with me than she had been before. That was the only difference.

posted by Jeri @ 10:12 AM  

013 The Waffle House Scuffle

The actual role of teaching fell to Warren Elseman, the school's most senior resident black belt, a tall, imposing man of good looks and a mercurial temper. Wisely, he maintained the exact same high standards of Mr. Hong, but he did not push his authority to the same limits.

Years earlier, as a first degree black belt, Elseman had been an avid competitor in the local tae kwon do tournaments. In the early days, these tournaments were conducted without protective padding other than mouthpieces and cups. Many fights were won by knockout.

Warren had just won first place at one of these old style tournaments, and he and his fiancee, Donna, had stopped at the Waffle House in Simpsonville afterwards. Because Waffle Houses are made of glass, people driving by could see Bill and Donna inside. Simpsonville was a small town where everybody knew everybody else, and so Warren's many friends came in and out to congratulate him on some great fights.

With all the coming and going, Warren and Donna were there for a couple hours, and most of the talk at their table was martial arts talk--rather loud as everybody was excited and happy. One man in the restaurant didn't like the talk and the carrying on. So he followed Warren and Donna to the cash register and said something to Donna that he shouldn't have said. Warren got angry, but Donna asked him not to fight, so he ignored the man, and then the man said it again.

As Warren took the change from the cashier he negotiated the balance between keeping Donna happy and not allowing that kind of language towards his fiancée'. He looked at the man and said, "If you want a fight, all you have to do is follow me outside."

"I got a knife in my boot that'll cut you down to size," the man called after him as he walked away with Donna.

"You heard me," Warren said. "If you want trouble, just come outside. Otherwise, go back to your table." And he went outside, stepping around a small motorcycle that somebody had parked up on the sidewalk that led to the front door.

He never looked back until the door behind him crashed open. Warren is about six foot two and very powerful, with very fluid hips and strong legs. All in a motion he turned and threw a military style round kick, driving it through with the hips and striking the man dead on the chin--just as the man was reaching for his boot.

It flung the man back into the glass wall of the Waffle House--scaring the daylights out of the people in the restaurant. As Warren explained it, he didn't get mad until after he hit the guy with the kick, and then he just got madder and madder.

Without really noticing it, Warren skirted around the motorcycle on the sidewalk, grabbed the guy's shirt front, and punched him. Then he punched him again and realized he'd better stop. So he grabbed the shirt front with two hands and swept back in a strong stride backwards to throw the man down--never seeing the motorcycle behind him.

Warren stepped back so hard and fast that his shoulders went right over backwards when he hit that motorcycle. Nobody knows why, but that thing must have been anchored. It stayed upright as Warren did a back flip right over it. His feet went straight up above his head and came down on the other side, and he landed face down right on the hard black top of the parking lot.

The first thing he heard was Donna's frantic, " Warren! Warren! Are you all right?"

He sat right up, blood streaming down his face, and exclaimed, "Hey! That guy's got a knife! Where is he?" He had a strip of skin hanging loose from his nose, and two other shorter strips were peeled down his forehead--one over each eyebrow in a straight line pointed down.

Then Donna started laughing. Between his own daze and the blood in his eyes, Warren didn't even see the other guy for a moment. The man had been flung over the motorcycle with him but had landed further away. With Warren grabbing the shirt front, the shirt had been pulled halfway up the man's arms and over his head. The guy got up on his knees with the shirt up over his head and partway up his arms. It forced his arms up over his head in the same position that a man has when he's trying to get into a sweater that is about half a size too small for him. He was so dazed and groggy he didn't even know where he was or why it had gotten so dark.

Before the guy could come back to his senses and reach for his knife again, Warren scrambled over to him, jerked the shirt down with one pull, and cocked back his fist. After being kicked in the face, punched, and then thrown over a motorcycle onto asphalt, the guy looked even worse than Warren did.

"I--I got a gun in my car--" he began, but it was clear that all the fight was knocked out of him. Warren thrust his face forward and yelled, "Do you want me to hit you again?"

"No," the man said.

"Then go back into the Waffle House!"

And the man did.

The next day, Elseman had two parallel racing stripes that ran from his hairline to his eyebrows, and another large stripe down his nose. He and Donna were regular church attenders, a practice that Mr. Hong approved of very strongly, but he decided not to show up that day.

At nine o'clock, there was a knock at the door. Surprised at having a visitor on a Sunday morning, he opened the door to see Billy Hong standing there. Hong had never been to his apartment before. The short, Korean man greeted him with a big smile. "Hullo Elseman! You miss church today?"

Warren invited him in. Only then did Billy Hong seem to notice the marks on his face. "You take a fall? You hurt yourself?"

He had no idea (and never learned) how Billy Hong found out so quickly about the fight. But they sat down and he told Mr. Hong the full story, a story that Mr. Hong enjoyed thoroughly. Bullying or picking a fight would get a person expelled, but enthusiastically repelling an attack would win approval from our late teacher.

Warren and Donna, who also studied tae kwon do, told that story with great enjoyment. It's a wonderful example of how anything can happen in a fight. But it also showed that Warren Elseman had one very necessary characteristic of a good teacher. He could laugh at himself.

Warren Elseman must have felt some nervousness as he stood before the class as the new head instructor. But outwardly he assumed the role with both gravity and a certain ease. After bowing in, the class stayed in formation and drilled on kicks. We moved as a single unit as Elseman barked the count. "Side kick!" he would shout. "One! Two! One! Two!"

He glared at slackers. Keeping up with the count was everything. We surged forward, turned when he commanded us, and followed the count back down the room. After a few sets of single kicks to warm up, we did combinations, and then jump kicks. The kicking sets would be interspersed with sets of hand techniques, to give us a chance to get our breath.

This twenty minute intro to class would put many aerobics teachers on the floor. For my first entire year at the school, I could not get through this session without cheating at times. I'd miss a count every now and then or slack off from going full force. By the end of the drill work, I would be exhausted, my legs quivering. Aerobically, I was not very fit. Nausea still plagued me in class at times---always during the drill work. I concentrated just on keeping up. Technical perfection was only my second priority.

After the drill work, the black belt students ran to form a line from the top of the long room to the bottom. They stood next to each other, and the instructor assigned a lower ranked student to each black belt. We would rush into place across from our chosen partner. Usually, the teacher assigned people of similar sizes, but often women were placed with women no matter how disparate their heights. This annoyed me then, and it annoys me now. I'm six feet tall, and the next tallest woman in class is usually about five foot six.

Still, I was determined to obey, and I knew that the women were all better than I, and so I never complained.

In the partners session, the instructor shouted the kick to be performed and then counted a set of eight or ten. The high ranked person kicked first. The low ranked person held still and served as a target. Of course, no contact was made, never intentionally. After the high ranked person had completed a set on the right and a set on the left, the low ranked person took his or her turn and did the same thing. But as we kicked, we received comments from our senior partner. This part of class benefited new students the most. It was also tremendously demanding, but there were more chances to catch the breath between sets. The partners session lasted about twenty to thirty minutes.

After a short water break, we would do our assigned forms. And then we lined up with our partners again and performed one-step sparring, in which one partner punched and the other practiced blocking and counter attacking. This was meant to be done full speed, with snap and focus, but without contact on the blows. The higher ranks also practiced take downs and foot sweeps in this session.

And then, finally, came free sparring. We slid in mouth pieces, and the women might put on shin pads, and then we went full speed at what Mr. Hong had always called "light contact."

One night one of the black belts got thrown back by a kick so hard that he hit the flimsily paneled wall to the men's room, butt first. His backside cut cleanly through the paneling, and he got stuck in the wall. The men pulled him out. For several weeks the wall had a sideways figure eight shape smashed in it, until the paneling was replaced.

Our school was on the second floor, with a balcony. When Mr. Hong had been alive, he had been so infuriated with a young black belt named Tony who was fighting with diminished fervor that Mr. Hong said he would spar the young man himself. To teach him a lesson, Mr. Hong kicked him so hard on the hip that Tony flew right out the door and hit the rail of the balcony. Mr. Hong had only meant to knock him into the wall. Tony overbalanced on the rail and nearly went over. Poor Mr. Hong rushed after him, but Tony had caught himself. It was the only time anybody ever saw Mr. Hong hug anybody. He pulled Tony back into the training hall, apologizing, and more shaken than Tony himself at what he had nearly done. Later, they laughed about it together, but when I heard that story I realized why Mr. Hong always closed and locked the reinforced glass doors before he would let us free spar.

Under Warren Elseman, I advanced through green belt to blue belt, but I was not doing well. I was an ardent student, but I was not a promising student. My height and fighting know-how made it impossible for any of the women to defeat me, but I was realistic enough to know that in terms of technique I was tremendously inferior to my peers.

I was working at tae kwon do, but not making much progress. There were kicks that were so strenuous that I could not even do them. Chambered kicks, which are pulled up tight to the chest before being shot out, were difficult but not impossible for me. But we also did kicks, such as the back spinning kick, in which the leg was picked up straight and flung around like a log by the hips. I couldn't do this kick at all, though I always tried.

It came down to a problem of fitness. With having to concentrate so hard in class on getting enough air into my lungs, I was unable to really develop my skills. Class was one long struggle to catch my breath. Also, I was putting on weight. Now that graduate school was finished and I was working at a desk for eight hours a day, going to lunch with friends, not moving much except at tae kwon do class, I was putting on the pounds and adding to my own burden even more.

I tested for my fourth degree brown belt, the lowest rank of brown belt, and when I passed with a low score, I made my decision. I had to take an aerobics class to systematically build up my oxygen efficiency and to keep my weight down. I also swore off all fast food. These were clumsy steps towards fitness, but now, in retrospect, I think that I had developed a key asset in martial arts training: I could step back, look at myself critically, and assess what needed to be done. I could make a plan and follow it.

After one year in tae kwon do, I knew I was not gifted. Big, slow, not especially coordinated, with weak and heavy legs. But I had been reading Ken Cooper's books on fitness, and my old college had actually had a very cutting edge physical fitness program that instilled a knowledge of fitness into me. I realized that proficiency in any athletic endeavor had to be gradually achieved. And so I settled down for a long term plan to improve. I wanted to be a black belt, and I wanted that black belt to come from Hong's Tae Kwon Do school.

posted by Jeri @ 9:32 AM  

012 Class Resumes

At Hong's Tae Kwon Do school, the students started each class by lining up in order of rank. The black belts were at the head of the line, and the ranks stood in descending order. The training hall was long but narrow, and so the line had to be broken into three or four shorter lines, arranged with people alongside each other and one behind another in perfect military precision.

The senior student at the top of the first line barked the command to come to attention. We did. We bowed to the instructor, who stood facing us. It was that simple. Other schools had more elaborate methods of starting class. But at Hong's, there was little room for ceremony. The proof of our dedication would be in our explosive, hard hitting kicks.

The black belts were so numerous that they often filled up the entire first line. There was no doubt about the seniority of each of them. Warren Elseman, the only third degree black belt who was resident at the main school, had always stood at the top of the line. Next to him were the second degrees, including the towering and powerful Phil Roberts and the small, trim, Danny Kidd.

The first degree black belts included a gifted young man named Linwood Cisco, blond haired, tall, and fast. I had read the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, and Linwood Cisco always reminded me of Wilder's descriptions of the youthful and brave Cap Garland: A flashing, brilliant smile, and a certain good natured recklessness hung on him. Linwood's rival and friend, the red haired, red bearded Will Thorson, was a first degree black belt a few months behind Linwood. Whereas Linwood glided on the air, throwing kicks that hit like pistons with a deceptive, relaxed grace and ease, Will was merely competent. He worked hard, with a ferocious courage. His red hair stood on end in most classes, and he drove himself without mercy. They almost always were next to each other in line, and Will devoted himself to rivaling Linwood in technique and ability. This attitude was not discouraged in class; indeed, it was respected. Goading each other to do better was a sign of a good spirit.

Billy Hong had enjoyed about nine years of the prosperous life he had built for himself and his wife. They had two children together. By the time he boarded the fateful flight KAL 007 in 1983, the school in Anderson had been passed on to others. The Greenville school remained the central school, and senior students ran sister schools in nearby towns. After the death of Billy Hong, several students left, including several other black belts. Mr. Hong had been too integral to the school for them to go on without him. The school, they said, would never be the same. I think that these men were correct. The school never could be the same without him. And the person who stepped up as head instructor would be foolish even to try to be a second Billy Hong.

There was very little dispute over the line of succession. The WTF, in a curious effort to ensure that Billy Hong's widow would be provided for, actually appointed her as the official head instructor. Our belt certificates would not be valid unless she signed them. Mrs. Hong was a stunningly beautiful and petite woman, a trained classical pianist. She had come from a wealthy and influential family in Korea. She had never taken a tae kwon do lesson in her life. She barely spoke English. Her life had revolved around her husband and the raising of their two children.

But now, she came to the school nightly to run the office. Amid the assortment of white cotton uniforms, sweatbands, and shin pads, she dressed in elegant silk, wool, tweed: expensive and beautiful dresses complemented by high, narrow shoes, gold jewelry, and flawless make up. The students treated her with deference and kindness. She was still waiting for him to come back. Because the bodies of the victims had never been found, there was some hope in the early days that some of them may have survived, that the plane had crash landed. And so she came, and she worked, and she waited.

posted by Jeri @ 6:45 AM  

011 Transition and Marriage

As the Tae Kwon Do classes grew and as Billy Hong assimiliated into American culture, he became more a part of the lives of his students and less a part of the rambunctious, independent life on the mountain. The school in Anderson grew. As his first few years passed, he turned out black belt students. He ate with them after Friday classes and was invited to their homes as a guest, a kindness that Billy Hong cherished from happy families. He launched small business ventures in export and import goods, and he even traveled back to his homeland a few times. When he did, he brought back gifts for the children of his students

Years after Billy Hong's death, one young man at Greenville technical college looked me up to tell me that his father had studied Tae Kwon Do under Mr. Hong, and Mr. Hong had given him a child's crib blanket from Korea for his infant son. That same son now stood before me, grown and married, telling me that his father still had that blanket, a long preserved gift to be taken out and shown when it was story time and Billy Hong came to life again for a few brief minutes in the minds of those who had loved and respected him.

Mr. Hong took up golf (and quickly learned to bet on it), a sport he considered to be the perfect partner to Tae Kwon Do. Its stillness, focus, and demand for power in some moments and delicate finesse in others balanced out the explosive martial art with quiet and concentration.

Younger students showed up at the school on Paris Mountain. Jack Moon, ever the detached, remote budoka, showed little regard for youth. If you walked into his school, you were fair game, and one or two alumni from that training hall ruefully remarked on Moon's ability to put a choke on novice fighters and not let up until they felt truly and thoroughly choked. There was some feeling in some of the graduates of that school that Moon was "not all there." His relentless pursuit of martial perfection and a mindset of detached readiness unnerved less easternized minds. But he used his skills in the mental game of figuring out strategy and built a name to be respected in industry security.

Eventually, Hong built his own school in Anderson and moved in to its back rooms. He palled around with his senior students, golfed with them, ate with them, and engaged in more innocent activities than strike breaking. Hong wanted clean cut, morally upright men as students. Apparently, he was almost Puritanical in his view of marriage, for he would expel students who shacked up with women or were unfaithful to their wives. A strong tradition from the oldest tenets of Korean martial arts remained strong in him: that an immoral person, prone to addiction and slavery to fleshly pleasure, could never achieve much in Tae Kwon Do. A pure mind was essential to raw, undiminished courage; the soul had to endure without cracking. And every student of Tae kwon Do was a representative of its highest ideals.

I have read and heard from students in Japanese martial arts of teachers, even masters, walking home from the bars dead drunk and staggering. In Robert Twigger's book, Angry White Pyjams, the senior teachers and masters got drunk and picked a fight in a bar after the funeral of one of their own. This was not a bunch of 20 somethings as Billy Hong had known back in Seoul, sneaking out behind the backs of the teachers, but adult men with students of their own.

Billy Hong did not allow such behavior. He once spied two brown belt students standing outside the door of a bar in the summer sunshine, drinking beers and just staring out at the street. He pulled over, got out of the car, took the beers from their hands and threw them down. Then he got in the car and drove away. He threw out students who were bullies or anybody who behaved in a lawless way.

He expected his students, at all times, to do the right thing. He wanted smart academics, moral outlook, and "right action." Late comers to class were severely punished with 50 pushups, and if you muffed them, he made you start over again. But I recall one of the most diligent black belt students rushing in to class one night, late. When Mr. Hong, surprised, demanded to know why this was so, the young man said, "I saw two women trying to change a flat off I-85, sir. I changed it for them."

That was an acceptable excuse. He was waved into class with no further questions. Assisting women, helping the elderly, doing anything that was a mark of good citizenship, were all required behavior.

He accepted some students and rejected others. One of his favorite tests for prospective students, on hearing a request for lessons, was to point at the ground and say "fifty push ups." If a man would drop on the spot and do his best to perform fifty push ups, Hong would accept him. But if a man would offer only excuses, Hong would send him away. People who stood in the doorway and stared were sent away. Class was not a spectacle. They could watch for a moment or two, but then they must join or leave.

Once, he had two teenagers hanging around the doorway. He stepped up to them, his eyes glittering. They had not asked for lessons, but he pointed at the floor. "Fifty push ups," he said. One of the boys ran away right there, but the other got down and tried. He pushed out as many as he could. When he could do more, he actually held back tears as he stood up and met Mr. Hong's glittering eyes. "I gotta go home now," he said.

"You come back and take lessons from Billy Hong," Mr. Hong told him. And he did.

I'm not sure what caused the rift between Mr Hong and Jack Moon. Somebody actually offered to explain it to me once, but I was so tired of seeing men in the martial arts break off from each other that I passed on the opportunity. But after the school in Greenville was founded, Mr. Hong stopped teaching on Paris Mountain, and Jack Moon didn't come around more than once or twice from then until the day Billy Hong left Greenville forever. Ukio, from what I heard, returned to Japan.

The transition was complete; the rough and rowdy days of his youth were over. He had the necessary money to arrange a marriage with a Korean woman. With the well wishes of his students behind him, Billy Hong left for Korea to find his bride, assisted by the centuries-old Korean practice of professional match making. He told one of his students that his own plan was to disarrange the little parlor where he would meet his prospective brides, and which ever one straightened it up would be his pick.

I don't know if it was really that simple. I doubt it. But when he returned several weeks later, with the shy, gentle, and lovely Mrs. Joy Hong on his arm, everybody knew he had picked well. They had been married in a quiet ceremony in Korea, but a much more grand wedding was held in the USA, with his old army friends attending, his students around him, and well wishes pouring in. After over 20 years of loneliness and wandering, he had a home, a beautiful wife, peace, and a prosperous life in the country that he loved.

posted by Jeri @ 7:59 AM  

010 Gambling, Strike Breaking, Teaching

Billy Hong lived with old friends from the military when he first arrived in South Carolina. He enrolled in Anderson College, studying business courses. And, as soon as he could, he started teaching Tae Kwon Do. His first students were college men.

At that time, the early to mid-1960's, karate was barely known in South Carolina, and Tae Kwon Do had never been heard of. Men familiar with the martial arts had learned it during the US occupation of Japan. Judo was the prevailing martial art, and even that was only sparsely taught.

But Hong's enthusiasm for his art and his incredible feats of strength, skill, and speed won him a small following that eventually grew.

Jack Moon, who lived on Paris Mountain back then, had a small judo dojo right on his own property. He was a hard core, non-nonsense teacher even then. A few years older than Billy Hong, he was intent on building his private investigation business. Eventually, he would become one of the top names in preventing and investigating industrial espionage. In the early days, he made his living the best way he could as any private detective did. He investigated infidelity cases, and he could be counted upon to hire strike breakers for the big textile firms around South Carolina.

He heard of Billy Hong and asked him to come to the small dojo on Paris Mountain. After a demonstration of Billy Hong's explosive martial arts, Jack Moon converted the dojo to Tae Kwon Do.

In addition, Moon invited Billy Hong to board with him. In Japan, it was not unknown for martial artists to all rent space together, as reflected in CW Nicole's memoir, Moving Zen, one of the first narratives about life in the martial arts to be published in the USA. Jack Moon rented rooms to another martial artist, a squarely built Japanese student named Ukio who worked as a bouncer and suffered from nervous stress. Ukio could do a lot of damage on the dojo floor, but he hated arguing and disorder. Life with Jack Moon, especially once Billy Hong moved in, turned his world upside down.

In class, Billy Hong never objected to anybody's fighting method. He believed that Tae Kwon Do had to be real. So fighters in the small school on Paris Mountain had to be prepared to meet Jack Moon's or Ukio's grasp. "If he got hold of you, you were pretty much finished," Danny Kidd once remarked of Ukio. For though his mentor was the more colorful of the two, Ukio always was the greater technical expert in getting in through the kicks of Tae Kwon Do and bring a person to the ground. He could submit just about anybody, but he couldn't get hold of Billy Hong.

These days, most styles of Tae Kwon Do have lost their arts of "getting in" and "getting out," but Billy Hong could close distance as expertly as any judoka. The difference was that he used the advantage to get behind his opponent. Early in his martial arts career, he had learned that to fight the Japanese styles, any Japanese style, a fighter had to move sideways and not be where his opponent expected him to be. he had to be where his opponent did not expect him, and that would always be just behind his opponent.

In the sports Tae Kwon Do culture, launching kicks has become so important, and the kicks themselves so central that the finer points of "angling," have been neglected. Too many Tae Kwon Do matches are simply two people ramming each other with spectacular kicks, head on.

Jack Moon hired Billy and Ukio for strike breaking. Unlike his former colleagues in Korea, Billy Hong never felt or expressed any need to go out and pick fights. But anybody who knew him knew full well that if you told him the strikers were pro-Communist, he would go break up strikes. He would launch himself into any mob, completely unafraid, armed with a piece of two-by-four or a baseball bat. And he was skillful enough to hurt without killing.

They lived a wild life, training in the dojo, breaking strikes, and--of course--gambling. One of Billy's later students told me that he knew more about gambling than any natural-born US citizen. Billy Hong could bet on anything, and it took him only a fraction of a second to figure out how to bet on outcomes and fix the odds. He was a man of his word, and when he lost, he paid up promptly, with no hard feelings. But he'd learned gambling as a child with the US army, and he had perfected it in the back streets of Seoul. For him, it was one more skill to acquire. And setting a stake was what gave it meaning and zest. He was good at it, and he got better.

Later in his life, Billy Hong disliked talking about his early days as a strike breaker. I suppose that he realized he had been a convenient tool and his fervent politics had been used to manipulate him. But when he first came to the USA, his outlook was entirely conditioned by his own upbringing and experience.

He was not a womanizer, and from the start, he saved his money for two things: to have a school of his own and to make a stable enough life for himself so that he could marry a Korean woman. The goal to have a wife and family remained a guiding star for him, as he had lived a lonely and wandering life. To gain this end, he lived a fairly simple life. He continued to attend college, and he discovered an unending supply of sturdy and durable students around college campuses. He started a class for Clemson University students (a class that continues to this day) that met several times a week.

The Clemson football team loved to pick at Billy Hong. He was five foot five, with 19 inch biceps and a 19 inch neck, his head shaved down to a military style crew cut (not unusual in the mid-1960's), and he was expert in a foreign fighting style that surely could not compete with American boxing or wrestling. Billy Hong once cleared out a Pete's drive-in when a member of the football team wouldn’t leave him alone.

"Billy Hong gotta headache," Billy told him as the much larger young man tapped at him and kept saying "Come on Billy, show me some of that stuff!" (tap tap) "Show me what you can do!"

"Billy Hong not fight today. Got bad headache!"

"Come on Billy, show me your stuff!" (tap tap)

He danced in too close, and Billy grabbed him by the collar in front and head butted him right on the nose with a forehead that had gone through roofing tiles. It knocked the young man out, and he flopped right onto the smaller Billy Hong, his nose bleeding profusely. Disgusted, Billy hoisted him up and threw him on top of the cigarette machine. He looked up to see the patrons clearing out the side doors.

Meanwhile, the carefree, adventure-packed life on Paris Mountain continued. Jack Moon, a self-made man in his own right, had the character to respect Billy Hong. And Billy Hong had the loyalty to be a true friend to his benefactor, Jack Moon. It was Jack Moon who helped him get through the incredible amount of paper work and endless trips to government offices that finally procured him his permanent visa status. This process took months, and without ever hesitating, Moon guided him through the complexities, spoke on his behalf, and scolded reluctant government officials who could not see why the USA needed one more martial arts expert as a permanent resident.

But both men were self-directed, enterprising, bold and daring men. And that meant egos clashed in the house on Paris Mountain. Arguments might be over anything from dirty dishes in the sink to delayed wages from the last job. It started with yelling and ended with them throwing things at each other and at the walls. And Ukio, the burly judo expert, would sit off to the side and say, "I hate it when they fight!"

posted by Jeri @ 5:34 AM  

009 Orphan, Refugee, Agent, and Champion

I decided to learn about Billy Hong. A contact told me that, for his first few years in the US, the young Billy Hong had boarded with a private detective who was a devotee of Asian martial arts: Jack Moon.

I obtained Jack Moon's phone number and he invited me up to his house on Paris Mountain to visit. Jack Moon, tough, built like a bull, but soft spoken, reflected the Japanese attitude of reserve. In conversation, he actually spoke little, and yet I learned everything I wanted from his direct, quiet answers.

When he was ten years old, the Korean War and the Communist army came home to Hyung N Hong. They occupied his village and imprisoned all the adults in their own homes, for security reasons. The children were allowed out occasionally, but the village filled up with invading soldiers, their equipment, and their vehicles.

American Air Force pilots, spotting the village and seeing no sign of normal village life, concluded that the Communists had driven off or killed the villagers. So they decided to level the village. On the morning that they attacked, young Hyung and another boy were allowed to go fishing at nearby fishing hole.

The planes came in swiftly and within minutes had reduced the entire village to a smoking wreck. Only the two boys survived.

The story becomes hazy at that point. Hyung did wander for several days, starving. I don't know if he was still in the area around the smoking remains of the village or if he had joined other refugees and moved on, but not long after the first tragedy, he was shot in the leg by a stray bullet while hiding from a skirmish between soldiers.

Unable to move, and too afraid to cry out for help, he stayed hidden until a small group of American soldiers found him. They took him to a MASH unit, where the friendly Americans removed the bullet and cared for him for as long as they were able. Hong later wrote of them sewing Army scrip into his clothing.

It was during his stay with the Army that he became enamored of Americans and their loud, friendly, generous ways. For a war orphan, they were like a great, noisy household of brothers and friends. He adopted the name Billy when he was with them.

Again, his story becomes hazy. Only rudiments survive from a few written journals he produced when he first came here. The big noses and big backsides of the Americans startled him. He was amazed by the broad handlebar moustache of one of the doctors.

From what I was told and read, he seems to have followed the US army with other refugees, at times slipping into the comforts of sympathetic care from the Americans. And yet there were also long, lonely patches when he simply traveled the countryside. He wrote of seeing the Communist soldiers tie up all manner of minor local officials, down to the mail carriers, with barbed wire and concrete blocks. They did this to the local officials, their wives, and their children, even the babies. Then, with the rest of the local citizenry forced to watch, they threw their captives into deep pools of water at the foot of great waterfalls, where they were all drowned.

Billy Hong hated the Communists all his life. He mentioned once that when he was still a refugee, somebody gave him a bucket of tomatoes. He was lugging his prize along a road when a Communist soldier passed him, took the bucket, threw the tomatoes down one by one, smashing them, then handed him the bucket and walked on.

But he also met unkind Americans. One American gave him a pouch of menthol tobacco and told him it was candy. He gobbled it down and was sick for days. He hated that man for the rest of his life, but he was too frightened of offending his benefactors to tell on him.

Over time, he developed friendships with one group of soldiers and officers from South Carolina. He eventually became a sort of valet and errand boy for an American lieutenant. His life became more stable, and he worked with devoted energy. But as he grew into his early teenage years, he also became a sort of agent against the Communists. This is the haziest part of his accounts of himself, but it seems clear that even while very young, Billy Hong did everything he could to inflict losses on the Communist soldiers. He blamed them for the death of everybody in his village.

As the war drew to a close, his American friends made inquiries about bringing him back to the United States. But there were hundreds, possibly thousands of such cases as Billy Hong. The US government did not allow it. But his American friends promised to help him if he could get to the USA. He was resolved to do just that.

He went to an orphanage in South Korea, but he decided that his best chance to get to the USA was to become a boxer. He had nothing else to do and nothing else to live for, so he took the only money he had and traveled to Seoul, where he asked a cab driver to take him to a boxing gym. His plan was to beg lessons in return for cleaning the place and acting as custodian.

The cab driver, misunderstanding him, took him to the Kukki Wan, the central school for Tae Kwon Do. The young teenage boy begged lessons and offered to work cleaning the toilets. It took a lot of begging and bargaining, but at last he was given permission to sleep in the training hall and care for the place. Years later, Billy Hong's only comment was "I cleaned a lot of toilets before I ever got a lesson."

But over time, the senior instructors came to respect his intentions. The only thing Billy Hong wanted was to become a champion so he could go to America. He cleaned, trained, ate, and slept. And then he trained some more before starting the entire routine over again. He once remarked to Frazer Johnson that he stayed so fixed on his purpose that he could go a week at a time not knowing if it was night or day.

He was still a teenager when he earned his first degree black belt. At 19 he earned his teaching certificate.

By this time, several impoverished but able young men called the training hall their home. They all worked fanatically at building their skills. They taught classes, served as custodians, and trained.

Hong once mentioned that two of his friends, who later came to the USA to open schools, would hone their skills by going to bars and deliberately picking fights. If they could knock out one or two people who willingly fought them, they considered it time well spent. They often invited him to join them.

But knocking out his countrymen, even the criminals who visited the local dives, didn't appeal to Billy Hong. He had strong ideals, and he saved his street fighting for Communist sympathizers or anybody perceived to be “from the other side.”. Even then, he remained active in staunchly anti-Communist groups that stayed in a shadowy netherworld, where they assisted in low-level matters of government Intelligence from time to time. He was never a major player, but he remained a reliable and willing assistant to anything that would further Democracy in South Korea and squelch Communism.

Billy Hong still hated Communism, but his teachers hated the Japanese. Decades earlier, Japan had humiliated and oppressed Korea, a crime that the martial arts teachers did not forgive. Billy Hong and several of his peers were groomed in their skills to attend an international tournament in Japan. When Hong decisively won in his bracket, he realized his dream to become a champion. He sent word to his friends in America, and he left Korea's shores to come to this country on a student visa and enroll in college.

posted by Jeri @ 6:13 AM