Buses arrive in Highland Falls, outside the USMA gate
(AP file photo)
NEW WINDSOR – The eyes of the world were glued on the Newburgh area 35 years ago today – January 25, 1981. The 52 Americans held hostage in Iran for 444 days were released and landed on American soil for the first time, at Stewart Airport.
They walked off the portable stairs rolled up to the passenger jet with the seal of the United States of America emblazoned on its side, kneeled and kissed American ground for the first time since being taken.
Tens of thousands of area residents waving American flags lined the fence around the airport and along the route to the US Military Academy at West Point, where charter buses carried the recently released people and family members to Hotel Thayer where they spent private time for a few days.
James Wright of New Windsor, who would a year later become the first and only chairman of the Stewart Airport Commission, which was established by the state, stood along the road outside the airport.
“We were waving and shouting and you could see hands waving,” Wright recalled. “You couldn’t see anyone up close at all. They had military escort and state police escort and local police escort; they went past our office at 525 Little Britain Road, went on down to Route 300 and eventually to West Point.”
That road was later renamed “Freedom Road” by the state.
Among those who were at the bottom of the stairs when the former hostages stepped off the plane, dubbed “Freedom One,” was a little lady, who worked at Stewart since the days it was an Army base. The late Sylvia Alpern later wrote to Wright, who was an Orange County Legislator at the time, that she received hugs and kisses from Americans.
(Editor’s note: Mid-Hudson News Publisher Hank Gross was at Stewart Airport when the former hostages arrived on that day 35 years ago and broadcast the event live on local radio.)
