Reverend M. William Howard, Jr.

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48 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Dec 2024 last heard Dec 2024

Reverend M. William Howard, Jr.’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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The New Yorker Radio Hour · Christmas in Tehran During the 1979 Iran Hostage Crisis · 24 Dec 2024 podcast
On the 22nd of December, which was a Saturday, your mother and I had been out grocery shopping. So when we returned, we found the telegram. I read the telegram aloud to her. And it said something like, the Revolutionary Council of Iran is pleased to invite you to conduct Christmas services with the Americans in the U.S. Embassy.
Well, as you know, I've done some pretty daring things in my younger days. One of the things she often said was, When I was given invitations to go to various places like Syria or Guatemala, she would look at me and say, is this what you think you need to do?
Shortly after I received the telegram, it came on the news that American clergy had been invited. And they mentioned that William Sloan Coffin, who was leader of the Riverside Church in New York, and Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of the Roman Church were going to also go.
At Riverside in New York, we met and we thought about the implications of this. We began to call around and speak with people who could give us some kind of orientation. We talked with then Secretary of State Cyrus Vance.
Frankly, they were delighted that we had been invited because up to this time, No American had been allowed to see the Americans that were in captivity there at the embassy. So, of course, there was a lot of speculation, but no one had actually seen them. So we were in no way discouraged from doing this.
It never really occurred to me, and this was a striking question, a surprising question I received from many people who presumed that there was a level of risk that we might be taken hostage.
No, I don't think either of us who traveled to Iran had that feeling. Why? Number one, we'd been invited. And number two, from the beginning, there was a sense of genuine respect for the religious heritage Of the hostages. Unitary. I mean, there were people there who were orthodox. There were non-believers. But there was a presumption that they were Christian.
And remember, the Iranian government was overwhelmingly Shiite Islam. And they wanted to show respect for the Christian faith. Now, keep in mind that Prior to that time, a lot of the public discourse, news media, they referred to these people as communists. See, they were very devout Muslims from all that I could tell before and during this event.
But remember, this is at Christmas, and Mom was responsible for assembling toys and things like that while I was away. She made me aware that she had quite a struggle getting him ready for Christmas. Right. But the interesting thing about this... is that the Iranian hostage crisis was the breaking news all day, you see? And Matthew literally could watch his father on television.
It didn't feel, I guess, to him that I was so far away.
Well, let me just say, I think propaganda is always part of something like this. But on the other hand, we had a public that was quite riled up, who knows what might have resulted if this issue were not somehow addressed. In other words, might there be an American invasion, an attempt to rescue the hostages in a militaristic way?
And frankly, I saw this as an opportunity to reduce that possibility. And this thing just kept going on and on. And a lot of vigorous protests. I don't know if you would recall. I mean, I wasn't alive. You may have read about the yellow ribbons. Right, right. That thing, I think it was taken from a popular song.
As I recall, we went to the airport, JFK, and it was evident that we were getting... I'm not sure who was giving us this assistance. I thought maybe the airport authorities because we were taken through a private entrance to the airport and held in a very lovely private lounge, not in the normal sort of place until our flight left. It's like you enter a situation, it's ordinary in some ways,
But the gravity of it unfolds as you're in it. We arrived in Iran. We were escorted to the, I think, the Hilton Hotel. And we walked in the door and there must have been 200 or more press people. It was a circus. I mean, people from the United States, but from all over the world, wanting to meet these clergy who were about to go into the embassy. You know, I'm a Protestant clergyman.
I'm thinking, Christmas, that's tomorrow, because this was in the evening of Christmas Eve. And I had staff people accompany me. And one of them came to the door of the hotel and knocked on the door and said, Bill, you'd better get dressed. We have to be at the embassy at the strike of midnight. Yeah, the midnight mass. And that's what the Muslim hosts knew about the Christian.
So we dressed quickly, and literally at midnight, we were at the embassy, driving to the embassy from the hotel. You talk about paparazzi. I mean, my Lord. You know, just speeding cars, reporters hanging out the window of cars with TV cameras. And you're wondering, Is there going to be some kind of accident here? But we arrived at the embassy and the moment we arrived, And we were expected. Yeah.
You know? I would hope so. That's when the... That would have been awkward.
We didn't surprise them. Yeah, yeah. But the thing that... What happened at that point really became interesting. They blindfolded us. Did they at least give you a warning that they were going to do that? They explained to us why we were being blindfolded. Sure. They weren't mean to us. Right. But we were completely at their mercy. Right.
They escorted us to a place, sat us down. Once we were inside, they removed the blindfold. Now, each of us were taken to a different location. We didn't know where the other people were, our colleagues. I was brought to a large room, well-lit, and there was a table there
with uh sort of desserts you know like cookies and cakes and so forth that was the muslim understanding of how christmas was celebrated what was it like sugar cookies and things i think it was sweet stuff i don't know uh i didn't explore it because i didn't dare eat it sure sure i didn't yeah was there a christmas tree there and all that oh yes yes it was sort of like
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