The Man Who Threw The American Flag in the Trash Can

A high school teacher who changed my life forever

Robert Hoderny, one of my many great high school teachers, threw the American flag in the trash can in one class when I was in the 11th grade (there I am above on graduation day). One of my fellow students got up and pulled it out. But “Rob” as we always called him, threw it in the trash again.

Rob also burned money in class. Twenty dollar bills. More than once.

Rob stood up on the top of his desk at times like Robin Williams would later do in the film, Dead Poets Society.

He always made his point. He changed my life. Most of all, I didn’t have to think like everyone else or take some safe mainstream position a patriotic position, or a faith-based position. I could be a critical thinker and still be patriotic and spiritual and believe in the divine in all of us in any way I wanted.

This is what I will try to do here in this space. I hope to be a seeker like my grandfather and my father. They were always seeking a better way to live and love.

I plan to publish here once per week on a topic that many of us might be thinking about and I will make it as personal as possible. I am not into writing for the sake of writing. As my bio says, I am a bard and barrister, the two professions that are personal and confront day-by-day what happens to human beings. I have written about these topics as a poet for nearly 40 years and I have practiced social justice law and taught it for over 30 years.

Rob is responsible for some of my career direction. His class in high school was called Social Justice. It was described as a “religion” class at my high school, Archbishop Carroll High School, in Washington D.C. All students at the then-all-boys high school steeped in the Augustinian Order had to take his class as part of the religion requirements.

His course topics: Mahatma Gandhi and non-violence. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The Vietnam War. War. Poverty. Racism. Nuclear War. He was a force of nature. When he threw the flag in the trashcan I can’t say I was outraged because I wasn’t.

I was a young Black kid by then and because of racism, I had begun to ask questions anyway based on how I was treated in society. I wrote poems about it later of how white shopkeepers at Rehoboth Beach followed me and my friends around the stores even though we had money to spend. It was most unusual to be told you were genetically a criminal when you were 11 years old in such an overt manner.

I grew up in a home where political discussions were welcome. This was the same for the city I grew up in — Washington D.C. My parents read the morning newspapers and other newspapers. The Vietnam War was on television when I was a kid and my father talked about it. My parents pushed great books on us and provocative things to read. This is still me today. I hate the milquetoast discussions, writings, music, dance, any kind of stuff that just follows the pack.

Rob and my family did that for me.

Rob fought in Vietnam. He was a soldier and veteran of that war. He understood and felt guilty about it. He was not ambivalent.

Rob also talked about the poor. He made us read Michael Harrington’s The Other America, the classic book about the poor in America. Rob also talked about people in homeless shelters and eating in soup kitchens. This is why he burned money and tore twenty dollar bills in half in front of the class.

We read Dr. King’s speeches and writings regularly. He showed us the film, West Side Story to demonstrate that violence always leads to violence. He took some students to New York to protest outside a corporation’s headquarters.

I was so affected by Rob’s teachings in the 11th grade, I took his advanced class in the 12th grade and the ability to study the topics and to discuss them became even more intense.

By the end, he and I had formed a connection. I am happy that years later, I was able to tell him of his impact.

Rob was killed years ago in 1997. It hurt bad, even though I hadn’t seen him in years by then. He had adopted two African American boys whose mother had been addicted to crack cocaine. He was trying to make a better life for them while their mother sought to recover. One of the boys was killed along with Rob.

So, today, as I spread my writing wings into this platform as a seeker, writer, and friend, I think of Rob and what I learned from him. I will forever ask questions and dig deeper for answers about my country and the world.

I will never forget watching him throw the American flag in the trash either even though Rob, a fierce Irish Catholic from Erie, Pennsylvania, loved America so.

I do hope you will ride along with me and chat and ask questions and go where this will take us.

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