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

What the Shiites imagined, maybe what they had seen on TV, movies, you know, in walks a stream of people, obviously hostages. And some of them were wiping their eyes and looking around. And of course, they're looking at me like, who the hell is this guy? They looked as if they had been kept in maybe a place not so bright. They didn't look disheveled or abused or anything.

And so one of the students, and let me just say the hostages were taken by and held by university-age students. And one of them said to the incoming people, this is Reverend Howard. He's going to conduct Christmas services.

Oh, with a lot of reluctance. You might say suspicion, like, who is this guy? And once, you know, they were all seated, I said, look, if I were in your situation, I would be suspicious of me too. And I said, in so many words, look, I have a family. I'd rather be at home. But doggone it, I agreed to come over here because the nation is concerned about you.

And then they began to warm up because I was not kidding around with them. You know, I said, look, if you don't want Christmas, we could just sit here until they come and get you. And then at some point, one or two of them would say, no, Reverend, we respect what you're doing. And what do you have planned?

And I said to them, look, I don't know your religious affiliation, so I'm not going to come and impose my own religious tradition on you. So you need to talk to me about what your needs are. And I remember very early in the conversation, before anything that we might consider religious began to happen, they asked me about the NFL playoffs.

Yeah, are you really who you say you are, you know?

And then, at some point, someone asked if I would offer a prayer. And we had a prayer. You know, the prayer was sort of a culmination of the conversation of acquaintance. And it was a prayer of contrition, a prayer recognizing the need for the intervention of a divine spirit and so forth and so on, but it was not long.

Well, I had no facility of that kind, but we did something that I think personally was quite affirming of the people. I said to them, if you have, as individuals, something you want to share with me of a personal nature and so forth, you know, sort of pastoral counseling, if you will. I'm going to sit here and you can come over. And there were a few people who came over.

We talked about how they were being treated and they wondered, for example, if there was a way for me to communicate with their families. And was there a way for us to make an appeal for their release? And sure enough, on Christmas afternoon,

a representation of our group, went back to the embassy to pick up letters that were being written by the hostages, and they were subsequently delivered to the family members when we returned. So that is essentially the first sort of link the family members had with their relatives who were being held captive. And then at some point the time ended and they were escorted out of the room.

My colleagues and I eventually wound up in a common room that felt like a basement to me. And the students who actually had invaded the embassy, taken the hostages, were there. And by the way, around the wall of this room were very young men. They could have been teenagers from all that I could tell.

very much armed with semi-automatic rifles or automatic rifles, standing around the wall of this little room. And that's when Dr. Coffin said something to the effect, how many of these folk are you going to allow us to take home?

Well, I said right away, Bill, it's not that kind of situation. He was associating this with Vietnam.

The Vietnamese were not driven by religion. These were people of real conviction about Islam. There was a female leader of these students, and she was known in the American media as Mary. When she spoke to him very sternly, you heard the young men cock their rifles, that kind of sound. And I said to him, Bill, you'd better leave that alone. And he backed down right away.

And after that experience, in that room, we also were taken to meet with the Mulas. in the Shiite tradition, the clergy are mullahs.

No, but let me answer that in two ways. One, the students were always clear, not biased. appearing to try and influence us, but they were very clear about the role of the U.S. in supporting the Shah, the presence of the U.S. in Iran, the role of the U.S. in overthrowing Mohammad Mossadegh in the 1950s. They knew all of that in ways that most Americans did not. But

When we went to visit the mullahs after visiting the foreign ministry, there were so many checkpoints, armed checkpoints. And it was evident at that point that we were going to visit the real power, not the government guy, but these clergy. And we were clergy. They were clergy. So we sat in this little room. I mean, a little room.

Like if a mullah was sitting here and I'm sitting here, our knees were almost touching. And that was when they really poured out all of their suffering. Some of them were crying. They told us stories. I'll give you one really iconic story. about American teenagers riding motor scooters into the mosque at prayer time.

And the leaders, the leaders were unable to do anything about it because the Americans were so much influential of the Shaw that the Shaw would not allow anything untoward to happen to the Americans. So these kids could just disrespect and so forth, and they cried. They explained there was some guy there with one eye, and he told a story about how he lost his sight The brutality of the Shah.

Now, we had some general knowledge of this, but this was like detailing. Now, on the image and indoctrination thing, because many people in the United States were assuming that if you guys could get in there and see the hostages, you must be a little bit biased toward these folks. You know, that was going around.

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