Our Town

Watching a thing on the 31st anniversary of the Iranian Islamic revolution on the news brought back memories of the Iran hostage crisis from 1979 through 1981. And not just how much it affected the country at the time, but my own home town even more so. One of the hostages, Cmdr. Donald A. Sharer, was from my little town, and his daughter Jennifer was on my cheerleading squad. She never talked about it, though. In fact I didn't even know her father was a hostage until my mother told me about it, about a week or two into the junior league football season that we were cheering for at the time. It was the 1980-81 fall season, and I was probably about eleven years old.

I seem to remember something that my mother told me at the time, that Sharer was considered one of the heroes of the hostage group for one instance when the rebels told the hostages to lie down on the ground because they were going to shoot them, and Sharer told them that if they were going to shoot him, they would shoot him standing up. Which prompted all the other hostages to get up off the floor and stand next to him. The rebels changed their minds about killing them after that. Am I wrong in remembering this? Keep in mind how young I was at the time. I'm still surprised I was able to remember at all.

But every tree in my town had a yellow ribbon around its trunk. Yellow ribbons on the buildings, on people's houses, on cars. I had never seen so much yellow. It was as if somebody rolled our town in yellow tissue paper. When the hostages were finally released, I seem to remember that Sharer was the only one who flew back home straight to the Norfolk airport, where I remember seeing Jennifer rush into his arms as it aired on the news, a mass of long blonde hair against his navy uniform. My town exploded in celebration.

I still see my little town the way it looked back then, draped in yellow, even time I go back to visit my parents. And I still remember the poster at my football game that January that said 'WELCOME HOME COMMANDER SHARER AND JENNIFER'S FATHER" as if it were yesterday. It's funny, what little blurbs on the news can prompt big remembrances of things past.