Macbook Pro Won't Boot off of USB Flash Drive
Tested the USB stick with 3 other laptops, all of which had superdrives.  Same failure mode.

Tried a second image on a new stick.

Rebooted the mac with the jump drive not plugged in.  Got a grey folder with a question mark -- I think that's 'no system folder'

On a whim plugged the new stick in.

Booted off of this stick just fine.  I am now in the process of doing a 3 pass secure erase of the hard drive.  Odd results in Disk Utility.   Claims that this disk has 19 folders, 59 files, and that 630 MB are in use.

I will add to this answer as I find more information.