The Last Hurrah

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

It was the one that truly mattered as America said "welcome home"

"We are not really heroes. We work for the Government and just did our job."

--Former Hostage Sergeant Joseph Subic, U.S.A.

Perhaps. But Americans, weary of bickering and division, had been looking eagerly for heroes who could inspire a healing outburst of spontaneous affection and patriotism.

And if the heroes turned out to be a band of 52 people who had withstood an ordeal that they had not sought, who seemed as puzzled as they were delighted by their sudden glory, and who preached no message except love of family, home and country? Well, so much the better: here at last were men and women who could be admired without reservation.

So the nation last week welcomed the freed hostages back from their 444 days of captivity with an orgy of emotion. Yellow ribbons were tied to virtually everything that could not or would not resist: trees, lampposts, TV cameras, trumpets, drums, pretty girls, the hostages' homes and public buildings, including the White House. Parades wound through Washington, New York City, Detroit, Milwaukee, San Diego and Columbia, S.C. Others will follow this week, in cities and towns where former hostages make their homes.

Inevitably, there were a few incidents of tasteless exploitation. A San Francisco executive of a supermarket chain suggested to store managers that they tie yellow bows around household plants, boost the price by $1.50 each, and tout them as mementos of the national celebration. At times too, the national euphoria passed the bounds of reason. Hand-lettered sign after sign along the parade routes proclaimed U.S. 52, IRAN 0, as if the release of the hostages represented an overwhelming American victory rather than what it was: the negotiated end to a prolonged national nightmare.

But for the most part, the coast-to-coast celebration was an outpouring of innocent joy. Said Lois Layton, who drove from Norfolk, Va., to stand in a crowd of some 400,000 watching the motorcade that took the freed hostages to President Ronald Reagan's welcoming ceremony at the White House: "It's like a release to me. I couldn't go to Iran and fight, but I can come here and scream." Said Norma Rose of Silver Spring, Md.: "I felt the suffering. Now, I feel part of the miracle of their freedom. It's what we needed desperately to bring our country together again." Trying to build on this new sense of national unity, President Reagan urged the ex-hostages and, by implication, the nation not to dwell on the past, but to "turn the page and look ahead."

The Government was already looking ahead, seeking answers to difficult and even dangerous questions stemming from the Iran experience. The most important: What will the U.S. do if terrorists, emboldened by Iran's example, seize another group of American hostages? At the White House ceremony, a momentarily grim Reagan answered: "Let terrorists be aware that when the rules of international behavior are violated, our policy will be one of swift and effective retribution." The freed hostages led a crowd of 6,000 in applause.

What kind of retribution: diplomatic, economic, military, all three? Secretary of State Alexander Haig, at a press conference the next day, said that the President was being "consciously ambiguous." In other words, the Administration is threatening would-be kidnapers of U.S. diplomats with retaliation, while keeping them guessing as to what form retaliation might take. Reagan, in his first press conference as President, elaborated with out explaining: "This is a big and powerful nation. It has a lot of options open to it."

Another pressing question for the Government was how to carry out the complex agreement with Iran that finally allowed the Americans to come home. Basically, the deal provides for the return to Iran of assets frozen by former President Jimmy Carter in exchange for the captives' release. Among those assets were $475 million worth of arms, including an F-14 fighter, a submarine, a helicopter, trucks, radar equipment, spare parts for helicopters and other aircraft, and ammunition. Iran had ordered and paid for all of it before the hostages were seized. Carter had frequently talked as if, once the hostages were free, the military supplies would be released. But Haig declared: "Let me state categorically, today, there will be no military equipment provided to the government of Iran." He said that the arms would be sold and the proceeds given to Iran.

While pledging to put most other terms of the agreement into effect, the Reagan Administration gave itself a month to study whether all of them are in accordance with U.S. and international law. Accordingly, Government attorneys last week began trooping into the U.S. courts where American companies have filed 380 suits against Iran claiming damages of roughly $3 billion. The Government lawyers asked the judges to stop all proceedings until the Administration completes its analysis. The claims involve, for example, property of U.S. firms that was nationalized by the present Iranian government and payments due for work begun under contracts during the Shah's rule and broken by his revolutionary successors. The agreement calls for the cancellation of all U.S. lawsuits against Iran. Instead, claims are to be settled by an international arbitration commission that is yet to be set up. This may not satisfy some U.S. companies, who fear that they will get little or nothing from the commission. They may try to continue to press their claims in U.S. courts, arguing that the agreement deprives them of property without due process. Legal experts expect most courts to uphold the deal, but the battles could be fierce and protracted.

The broadest question for the Administration was what future relations between the U.S. and Iran will be like. As part of the hostage-release agreement, Carter in his last hours in office signed an Executive Order ending the U.S. embargo on trade with Iran, which in 1978, the last year of the Shah's regime, totaled $4 billion. The ink was barely dry on his signature before Iranians began bombarding U.S. companies with bids to purchase animal feeds, turbines, safety valves and all manner of other goods. The companies asked Washington for guidance. At their press conferences, Reagan and Haig were questioned about what kind of trade relations the Administration would permit with Iran.

Though Washington can no longer forbid trade with Iran, Haig, underscoring his advice with a tautology, urged U.S. companies to proceed with "careful caution." Reagan spelled out one reason: the Government cannot guarantee the safety of any American who might be sent by his company to Tehran to negotiate a deal. Said the President, smiling but not really joking: "I hope they're going to do it by long distance. We wouldn't want to go back to having just a different cast of characters with the same show going on."

There are other considerations arguing against a speedy resumption of trade with Iran, and they apply not only to the U.S. but to Japan, West Germany, Britain, France and the dozen or so other countries that have lifted the trade embargoes that had been applied at Washington's request. Iran at the moment is the model of the kind of nation that business executives shy away from: it is at war with its neighbor Iraq, it is ruled by a faction-torn, unstable government; it has no way of offering solid assurances that it will pay for what it buys. No Western government will guarantee Iran's credit. Which is to say that, though Iran has suffered no formal punishment, it is nonetheless still paying a price for the anti-Western frenzy that led to the seizure of the American embassy.

But all that was far from the minds of most Americans last week.

The national celebration began to build even before Freedom One, the gleaming white Boeing 707 that brought back the ex-hostages from Wiesbaden, West Germany, touched down at Stewart Airport in Newburgh, N.Y., on Sunday. A crowd that eventually numbered about a thousand watched from a nearby hill. Inside the terminal, some 140 hostage family members sang patriotic songs while they waited for the plane to arrive.

When Freedom One landed, the families formed a semicircle around the ramp to the plane's front door. Frank Tarbell, general manager of the airport, shook hands with the first two or three Marines to get off the plane, but as the freed hostages began rushing into the arms of wives, children and parents, Tarbell walked away. Said he: "I had the feeling that I was an intruder."

Aboard six silver and green buses, the former captives and their families headed for West Point, where they were to spend the first 40 hours of their reunion.

The procession turned into a kind of Fourth of July parade in January; crowds sometimes ten deep lined the 17-mile route, cheering, laughing, weeping and waving flags and, of course, yellow ribbons. A fire truck extended a ladder hung with 52 American flags over the road. At the West Point gate, some 5,000 people chanted "U.S.A.!"

The reunited families had barely reached the academy's Hotel Thayer, a structure of gray stone and red brick, before the hotel switchboard was tied up with calls--some 14,000 in all--for the hostage families.

When not talking on the phone, the ex-hostages jogged, strolled about the Point or chatted animatedly in small groups.

Though the press was banned from the hotel and its grounds, several former hostages and members of their families walked up to reporters and TV crews, who stood behind barricades (yellow, of course). Most of the former hostages wanted only to express delight at being home. Kathryn Koob, accompanied by Elizabeth Ann Swift, said that the homecoming was "like having a bath in love." Added Swift: "We're all just walking around with silly grins on our faces." Jesse Lopez of Globe, Ariz., confided that his son James, a Marine sergeant, was "his old crazy self," repeatedly cracking jokes. What kind? "Unprintable," said the father.

Such comments gave the first clues to an important fact: the 52 seemed to have withstood their ordeal remarkably well. Though most lost weight, and one displayed bruises from beatings by his captors, the Americans appeared in generally sound health, even though at least two ex-hostages were hospitalized with bronchitis or pneumonia. About ten others suffered milder attacks of the same symptoms. But early reports that as many as a dozen of them might be suffering from serious psychological problems appeared groundless (see BEHAVIOR).

All of the attention from reporters --from one-on-one interviews to ABC News' rebroadcast of its excellent three-hour account of the secret negotiations to free the hostages--bewildered several of them. Donald Cooke, the former vice consul in Tehran, described the public and media hoopla as "very strange," but not unpleasant. "Being in prison--that was a difficult adjustment. But getting out and being free is going to be very, very easy to get used to."

At a mass press conference, 41 ex-hostages spoke guardedly about their captivity. But in interviews later in the week, several of them supplied new details of the psychological torment and physical mistreatment they had suffered. They confirmed rumors that one and possibly two unidentified hostages had attempted suicide early in their confinement. The ex-captives disclosed that, toward the end of their imprisonment, half a dozen hostages were desperate enough to begin planning a mass escape attempt, even though they knew that they had very little chance of getting out of Iran alive.

A few former hostages accused the three American clergymen who visited them last Easter of having been overly sympathetic to their Iranian captors and of having given the American public a false impression that the hostages were being treated well. The ex-captives recalled that one of them had given a clergyman a written message complaining about mistreatment, but the clergyman turned the note over to the Iranian guards, who then treated the Americans even more severely. Sergeant Lopez told a member of his family: "If you see that Reverend Rupiper, spit in his face for me." Lopez was referring to Darrell Ru-piper, a Roman Catholic priest in Omaha, Neb., who acknowledged that he had indeed been handed a note during the visit but said that it was taken from him by an Iranian guard before he had a chance to read it.

That, however, was about the only discordant note in the festivities that got steadily more jubilant during the week. From West Point, the ex-hostages and their families were flown to Washington for a 16-bus motorcade from the Capitol to the White House. Crowds at times 20 deep sang anthems such as America the Beautiful. The former hostages gave thumbs-up signs or clenched-fist salutes. One or two, like veteran politicians, thrust their arms through the windows of the slowly moving buses to shake well-wishers' hands.

The White House ceremony was filled with the pageantry usually reserved for visiting heads of state. About 6,000 guests, including many members of Congress and the Cabinet, jammed the White House south lawn; thousands more jostled outside for peeks through the fence. The platform on which the former hostages sat was ringed with 53 American flags (an extra one for Richard Queen, who was released by the Iranians last July because he had multiple sclerosis; he joined his comrades at the ceremony). Reagan greeted the freed hostages by saying: "Welcome home. You are home and, believe me, you are welcome."

L. Bruce Laingen, the charge d'affaires and highest ranking U.S. official in Iran when the hostages were seized, responded: "Mr. President, our flight to freedom is now complete." Looking much younger than his 58 years, and speaking in the measured tones of a polished orator, Laingen paid tribute to "our families, the real heroes in this crisis."* He recalled having seen a sign that proclaimed AND THE WORLD WILL BE BETTER FOR THIS. Said the diplomat: "We pray, Mr. President, that this will be so."

The ex-hostages then went inside the White House for a combined reception and ritual. Family members roamed all over the first floor, nibbling on finger sandwiches and eclairs; some young children began roughhousing. Said a benign Press Secretary James Brady: "This is their house." Meanwhile, the 53 former hostages stood in a horseshoe formation in the Blue Room. Nancy Reagan entered in--what else?--a yellow dress, shook a few hands, then said, "I can't stand this [restraint]" and hugged and kissed the former captives. As a White House military aide called their names, each of the 53 stepped forward to receive a rosewood box, engraved with Reagan's signature and containing an American flag.

From Washington, the freed captives fanned out around the country to celebrations in their home towns. Some typical examples:

Dorothea Morefield, whose husband Richard was Consul General at the embassy, had told San Diego Mayor Pete Wilson that she wanted a party, and she got it. The Morefields' plane was greeted by a Navy band and a Marine color guard, and Wilson presented Richard with a golden key to the city. At the Morefields' home in the suburb of Tierrasanta, 7,000 people waited in intermittent ram. After a few speeches and rounds of handshakings, the Morefields entered the house to discover it had been repainted (mercifully, not yellow) by a local contractor for free.

Frederick Kupke, a communications operator at the embassy, was greeted at the Indianapolis airport by a high school band playing Back Home Again in Indiana and a crowd of 1,000. He was driven north in a van along Interstate 65 through Rensselaer (pop. 4,700), where he had at tended high school, to Francesville (pop. 1,000), where his grandparents have a farm. Truckers passed the word over their CB radios that "the boy from Eye-ran" was home. In Rensselaer, a color guard of aging men from the local chapter of the Veterans of Foreign Wars gave Kupke a crisp salute.

Marine Sergeant John McKeel curled up in a seat of the plane taking him from Washington to Dallas and fell asleep.

Then came the pilot's announcement to the passengers: "Ladies and gentlemen, we are honored to have with us ..." Flight attendants brought small chocolate cakes decorated with American flags and broke out champagne; passengers crowded around and proposed toast after toast to McKeel (who drank beer). At an airport reception in Dallas, McKeel exuberantly kissed a Braniff flight attendant. After that, he went to his parents' house in the nearby town of Balch Springs.

Bruce Laingen, back at his home in Bethesda, Md., made a short speech to the crowd of about 200 neighbors, then ceremoniously ripped a faded yellow ribbon from an old oak tree in his yard. The ribbon, tied there by his wife Penelope shortly after the hostages were seized, apparently was the very first of the tens of thousands that have sprouted since.*

At week's end, 20 former hostages joined Barry Rosen, a press attache at the embassy and the only native New Yorker among them, for a ticker-tape parade along lower Broadway. A crowd that police estimated at 1 million showered them not only with confetti but with scraps of paper torn from the yellow pages of phone books and long white streamers of computer printouts.

This week more parades for many of the ex-hostages -- and then? Generally, the former hostages will be given at least a month's leave to vacation or just plain loaf with their families. They will not lack financially. While they were in captivity, their salaries were paid to their families or into personal bank accounts. In addition, they will be given priority in applying for choice future assignments. Says a senior State Department official: "They can pretty much write their own tickets." But a welcoming nation may turn the page only with nostalgic regret: it was so good, even for a week, to feel united in wholesome, unalloyed affection and patriotism.

* Nobody mentioned Jimmy Carter, who that day left Plains with Rosalynn for a vacation in the Virgin Islands.

* The origin of a yellow ribbon as a symbol of longing for a captive's return is lost in mists of conflicting folklore and folk songs like Round Her Neck She Wore a Yellow Ribbon ... "for her lover who is far, far away." What is certain is that a modern song, Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree, composed by Irwin Levine and L. Russell Brown in 1973, became an enormous hit; some 100 million copies were sold. The tune, however, had receded into the back of Americans' minds until Penelope Laingen remembered it.

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