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This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour.

I'm Adam Howard, and I have a personal, sort of unusual holiday story to share with you today.

It starts back in 1979.

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.

That's the Reverend M. William Howard Jr. He received that telegram as the Iran hostage crisis was

unfolding. Reverend Howard was a prominent minister at the time, the president of the National Council

of Churches. He also happens to be my father. So when this came across your mail and you're

reading it with mom, I mean, did you even hesitate for a minute?

Or did she raise any concerns or reservations about you going?

Well, as you know, I've done some pretty daring things in my younger days.

One of the things she often said 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?

During the hostage crisis, revolutionaries in Iran invaded the embassy because of America's

ties to the Shah. The Shah was the country's corrupt last monarch, and he'd been propped

up largely by the CIA. Now, by that point, the Shah was in the United States, receiving

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