Word: timme
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...soft voice by a slight, graying American woman as she faced a throng of reporters in Tehran, about 7,000 miles from her home in Oak Creek, Wis., a suburb of Milwaukee. Only hours ahead of a ban on travel to Iran imposed on Americans by the President, Barbara Timm, 41, had flown to Tehran on a unique maternal odyssey. She wanted to visit her son, Marine Sergeant Kevin Hermening, who, at 20, is the youngest of the 53 hostages. At her side was her second husband, Kenneth Timm, 42, a construction machinery salesman...
When her son, who had helped guard the embassy for only two months, was first seized, Mrs. Timm feared he would die. Then she hated the Iranian people; later she said she hated the U.S. Government. "Finally," she said, "we knew that we never could find peace as long as we were filled with hatred. So we came here...
...long trip for Barbara Timm in more ways than one. She is anything but a political activist, although she does care about social causes that touch her life. Her five children living at home are among the few in Oak Creek bused to Milwaukee's public schools under a voluntary integration program. Familiar with the problems of the mentally ill, she has testified before state hearings on the subject. But for the most part, she and her family live quietly, bowling a lot, going on camping trips, playing the guitar...
When she decided to attempt to see Kevin, Mrs. Timm had no idea she would even be admitted to Iran, let alone gain access to the embassy. She and her husband obtained 15-day visas from the Iranian embassy in Paris, easily got in touch with the militants by phone and flew to Tehran. Two days later, the militants took the Timms to a cemetery where victims of the revolution against Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi lie buried. Kenneth Timm took photographs. "I knew they had to test me," Mrs. Timm recalled later. "They wanted to feel...
Kevin, who had not known that his mother was in Iran, was given only 20 minutes advance notice of the reunion. "There was a lot of kissing and hugging, but there were no tears," Mrs. Timm recalled later. The two sat on a couch, and "we never quit holding hands, like we had a permanent attachment to one another." An Iranian television crew filmed the meeting, while a few of the militant captors watched in silence. They let the reunion last for 45 minutes...