Iran Hostages: America's Incredible Day

When Ronald Reagan takes command and the hostages are finally freed

It was an extraordinary conjuncture of events, compressed almost beyond credibility: within a mere 41 minutes, a presidency began, an ordeal ended, and the nation was swept by a sense of shared emotion and exuberance not felt in years.

Even Ronald Reagan, at ease with the implausibilities of fictive film, would have rejected the script as beyond belief. At the approach of high noon, the hero strides to the podium. Gently, the sun tries to break through an overcast sky. With a resounding "So help me God!" he pledges to uphold the Constitution, and then calls for an "era of national renewal." He leaves the platform, with the U.S. Marine Band playing Hail to the Chief, and minutes later a plane half a world away finally lifts off from a Tehran runway, thus ending an ordeal that has sapped the nation's confidence for 444 agonizing days. Hollywood would not have touched such an improbable melodrama, but so it happened last week, and Ronald Wilson Reagan was the leading man.

Watching on television, getting the word from a neighbor or a passer-by on the street, listening to radios even at the Inaugural itself, Americans learned of the hostages' release and felt a surge of national relief, a rebirth of confidence and hope, however transitory, that rivaled the first landing on the moon. Here was a pageant awash with symbolism and reality that defined democracy: the orderly transfer of authority to the nation's 40th President. And it coincided with the news Americans had been waiting and praying for these long, agonizing, humiliating months. The 52 were free at last.

It was a dual extravaganza broadcast on split television screens and recorded in newspapers with double-decked banner headlines. Moment by moment on Inauguration Day, the stories, both intertwined and competing, unfolded, building to a happy ending. The final act began at 11:42 a.m. in Washington as a Marine baritone, Michael Ryan, launched into the third verse of America the Beautiful. 'O beautiful for heroes proved/ In liberating strife," he sang from the podium on the Capitol's West Front, where in minutes Reagan would be sworn in as President. At that moment, the news began to spread of a wire-service bulletin, "Hostages free." A murmur emanated from those in the vast crowd who had brought their radios.

Official confirmation of the report did not come until shortly after 12:33 p.m., when the first of two planes on the Tehran runway finally took off. The second, which actually bore the hostages, left five minutes later. Gary Sick, the National Security Council's chief Iran team member, relayed the word to Jimmy Carter as he rode toward Andrews Air Force Base for his flight home. James Brady, the new presidential press secretary, tapped Reagan on the shoulder as he entered the Capitol for a lunch with participants in the Inaugural ceremony and told him the news, relayed from the White House Situation Room through National Security Adviser Richard Allen. A few minutes later, Reagan told the press: "The word that we have is that both planes are airborne."