Dr. Samuel Hetherington began studying Taekwondo in the fall of 1973 with Instructor Jae Hun Kim, fellow MIT student and Third Degree Black Belt student of General Choi Hong Hi, founder of the Korean martial sport he had named Taekwon-Do in 1955. Sam was fortunate to witness his own Instructor’s testing for Fourth Degree Black Belt by General Choi. The test, performed by Jae Kim and two Sixth Degree Black Belts that had accompanied the General, included an exciting demonstration of pre-arranged Taekwondo sparring and highly advanced kicking techniques in front a large MIT audience. It was an event that he would never forget. Sam went on to study Taekwondo as a student of Master Dong Ja Yang at Howard University. Dr. Yang, one of the leaders of the United States Taekwondo movement, kept his students up to date with the latest techniques being practiced by the Korean Taekwondo Association, the school headed by Dr. Un Yong Kim, who was then the President of the World Taekwondo Federation (WTF). Each year, Dr. Yang would bring over the Korean Middle Weight National Champion to teach his students the latest sparring techniques. As a consequence, Sam was a member of the Howard University Taekwondo Team that won seven National Collegiate Taekwondo Championships and was also a US Coach at the 7th World Taekwondo Championships in Seoul, Korea in 1985. Sam ultimately achieved Fourth Degree Black Belt in 1987. It was during these years of study that Sam worked to assist Dr. Yang in his efforts to make Taekwondo an Olympic sport. Dr. Yang relentlessly pursued this goal as President of the United States Taekwondo Union and by the 1984 Olympics, Taekwondo had achieved status of “Group A Member” of the USOC, and finally as an official Olympic sport in 1988.
Sam joined the Optics Branch at Goddard in 1990 and, soon after, joined Master Michael Comberiate in the practice and instruction of Taekwondo at Goddard.
