Relatives’ hopes

Press, 20 January 1981, Page 1

Relatives’ hopes

NZPA-Reuter New York Disappointed so often in the past, lelativesof some of the hostages tried in vain to hold back their elation yesterday at new indications that their loved ones might soon be freed after 443 days as daptives in Iran. •“I feel like a scenic railroad, going up and down,” said John Smith, of Rising Sun, Indiana, stepfather of a hostage, Don Sharer. “We try not to get up, because these crazy people can do anything at the last minute. But we can’t help it. We’re up.” Some relatives said they were waiting for word from the State Department, while others said they would not believe the ordeal was over until the hostages were actually aboard a plane out of Iran. “You want to see a nervous breakdown?” Dorothea Morefield asked reporters at her home in San Diego, California. Mary Needham, of Bel-

levue, Nebraska, mother of an Air Force captain, Paul Needham, said: “The announcement by Nabavi doesn’t mean anything. When they are on a plane on their way home, we’ll know.” David’Schaefer, aged 23, son of Colonel Thomas Schaefer, said: “Until the thing is official, I don’t want to get my hopes up. I’m not going to believe it until they are gone.” On the patio outside the Memphis home of Ernest and Susan Cooke, a bottle of champagne sat in a cooler, watched over by a reporter, who Mr Cooke assigned to make sure it was chilling properly. Mr Cooke said he would not open the champagne until he had official word that his son and the others were on their way out of Iran. In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Mrs Barbara Timm, the mother of a marine hostage, Kevin Hermening, said: “I do believe it is going to happen. I can see him being released and I

can see him getting on a plane.” ' ' Mrs Timm, who defied the United States Government by going to Teheran last year to see her cap' tive son, said she had not slept for 48 hours as she and her second husband, Kenneth, listened to radio bulletins. Mrs Katherine Keough, wife of William F. Keough, jun., head of the American School in Islamabad, Pakistan, who was visiting Teheran at the time of the take-over, said that Mr Carter and the Secretary of State (Mr Edmund Muskie) had both talked to her and told her that the difficulties were not substantive but the agreement would have to be translated. When asked what she planned to do when her husband, Moorhead, returned, Mrs Louisa Kennedy said, “I am. very superstitious about even mentally planning for days ahead.

“Let’s take it day by day.”