Flying yellow ribbons coast to coast, a jubilant U.S. hails the hostages
America's joy pealed from church belfries, rippled from flag staffs and wrapped itself in a million miles of yellow ribbon, tied around trees, car antennas and even the 32-story Foshay Tower in Minneapolis. Barbara Deffley, wife of the Methodist minister in Holmer, Ill., rang the church bell 444 times, once for each day of captivity. "At about 200 pulls, I thought I'd never make it," she gasped. "Then at about 300 pulls, I got my second wind and kept going all the way." Massachusetts House Speaker Thomas W. McGee, 56, was too impatient to wait for a ladder, so he shinnied ten feet up a pole to reach the halyard and hoist the U.S. flag over the statehouse in Boston. In Mountain Home, Idaho, some 200 townspeople staged an impromptu parade, driving their cars three abreast, headlights on and horns blaring. Patrolman Joseph McDermott coasted his cruiser to the side of a street in Rochester, N.H., fighting back tears. Said he: "I am overjoyed. I feel proud again."
Joy at the restoration of pride to a nation that had been humbled for too long by a puny tormentor was but one of the many reactions of Americans to Iran's final release of the 52 U.S. hostages last week. There was a sense of relief too. And scorn for Iran. But above all the initial dominant mood was one of continuing celebration, from the moment the first plane carrying the former captives cleared Iranian airspace to the climactic touchdown on U.S. soil of Freedom One just before 3 p.m. on truly Super Sunday at Stewart Airport, 50 miles north of New York City. There in privacy that not even the longest lens of press and TV cameras could penetrate, the returnees from Iran at long last were tearfully reunited with their families to begin two days of quiet time alone at West Point before journeying to Washington Tuesday for the official welcome home at the White House.
As the days passed, however, the public mood turned more somber and then angry as the released Americans began to tell their families and U.S. officials about the cruelty they had endured during their 14½ months in Iran. No one sounded more outraged than Jimmy Carter, whose final days as President and first days as a returned citizen of Plains squeezed him through an emotional wringer. He had known, of course, that some of the hostages who had been released earlier had been verbally abused and psychologically harassed with threats of death—mild treatment compared with the savagery inflicted on many Iranians during the Shah's rule and then later under Khomeini, though unconscionable nonetheless. But during a wrenching visit with the 52 at the U.S. military hospital in Wiesbaden, West Germany, Carter became appalled at the hostages' descriptions of their ordeal.