Politics & Government
Iran bombing avenges Vermonter's seige
Former Burlington school superintendent was one of Iran's U.S. hostages in 1979
Ted Cohen/Patch.com
It's 46 years too late, but the U.S. bombing Saturday of Iran helps avenge the grueling seige of the Vermonter who was one of the hostages grabbed in 1979.
Bill Keough was Burlington school superintendent in the mid-1960s.
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When Iran grabbed a bunch of American hostages in 1979, Keough was fatefully one of them.
William F. Keough Jr., who was one of 52 American hostages held in the U.S. Embassy in Iran for 444 days from late 1979 to early 1981, died in 1985 of Lou Gehrig’s Disease.
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The 6-foot 9-inch educator was 55 when he died at his home in Washington.
Within a year of his release in January, 1981, Keough was diagnosed as having amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, an incurable degenerative ailment of the central nervous system.
Keough often was the spokesman for the hostages held captive by militant students during the most intense days of the revolution led by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Keough, originally of Waltham, Mass., had been superintendent of the 4,000-student American School in Tehran but had taken a new post in Pakistan.
He had returned to the embassy in Tehran to collect student records at the time of its seizure by the militants Nov. 4, 1979.
The hostages were taken after the flight into exile of Shah Reza Pahlavi and Khomeini’s rise to power.
Their release was tied to the return of the shah to Iran to face trial for alleged crimes against the Iranian people, a demand President Jimmy Carter refused to meet.
Keough served as the head of several schools in New England before accepting the post in Iran. He remained in Washington after his release.
In an interview the year he died, Keough, who lost 80 pounds while in captivity, said there was “no sense wringing your hands,” over his always-fatal illness.
“I keep remembering a line from Shakespeare’s ‘Julius Caesar’ that goes, ‘Cowards die many times before their deaths; but the valiant taste of death but once.’ ” - L.A. Times
BHS yearbook photo of Bill Keough shown in his Burlington, Vermont school superintendent office in 1966.
