The chance reconnection of a Colorado law professor with Iranian orphans and a family he met 45 years ago as a Peace Corps teacher has led to a rekindling of friendships in the face of escalating conflict between their two countries. Today Norm Aaronson, 62, and his former students and others are weighing a reunion in Iran. The U.S. and Iranian governments discourage such contact, with formal ties long severed. To pursue friendship amid talk of war feels strange, said Aaronson, an emeritus professor at the University of Colorado law school. "Everybody's saying negative things," he said. "It bothers me ... I look beyond that, because I met so many wonderful people there." The friendship began when Aaronson was posted in Iran from 1968 to 1970 at the Caspian seaside town of Babol, where he stayed in the home of a devout, financially strained family. He delighted Iranians by teaching English - even the police chief and mayor enrolled - and gobbling eggplant stew. He held classes at an orphanage and several schools. His host mother, Salar Gohari, now 86, comforted him when he learned long-distance that his father had died of a heart attack. Aaronson amazed the Iranians when, after flying home to try to make the funeral and missing it, he returned to Babol to complete his work. The reconnecting began last year. Abbas Manesh, an orphan taught by Aaronson, had escaped from Iran to Turkey and made it to California as a refugee. He tracked Aaronson via another ex-Peace Corps teacher and the computer search engine Google.
A series of fortuitous circumstances reconnects law prof Norm Aaronson with Iranians he taught while in the Peace Corps
Old friendships stronger than nations' anger
A series of fortuitous circumstances reconnects law prof Norm Aaronson with Iranians he taught while in the Peace Corps.
By Bruce Finley
Denver Post Staff Writer
Article Last Updated: 09/23/2007 01:10:06 AM MDT
Caption: Colorado University Law professor Norm Aaronson, right, looks over old photographs taken while in Iran with friend, Piruz Nahreini, on the CU campus Thursday morning in Boulder Colorado. Aaronson worked for the Peace Corp in 1968 in Iran when he met Nahreini, who was then only ten-years-old, a cousin of the family the Aaronson was staying with. Nahreini is now 49-years-old and has lived in the United States since 1978 and recently (four months ago) got re-aqainted with his friend Norm through a chance email. (Post / Andy Cross)
The chance reconnection of a Colorado law professor with Iranian orphans and a family he met 45 years ago as a Peace Corps teacher has led to a rekindling of friendships in the face of escalating conflict between their two countries.
Today Norm Aaronson, 62, and his former students and others are weighing a reunion in Iran. The U.S. and Iranian governments discourage such contact, with formal ties long severed.
To pursue friendship amid talk of war feels strange, said Aaronson, an emeritus professor at the University of Colorado law school.
"Everybody's saying negative things," he said. "It bothers me ... I look beyond that, because I met so many wonderful people there."
The friendship began when Aaronson was posted in Iran from 1968 to 1970 at the Caspian seaside town of Babol, where he stayed in the home of a devout, financially strained family. He delighted Iranians by teaching English - even the police chief and mayor enrolled - and gobbling eggplant stew. He held classes at an orphanage and several schools.
His host mother, Salar Gohari, now 86, comforted him when he learned long-distance that his father had died of a heart attack. Aaronson amazed the Iranians when, after flying home to try to make the funeral and missing it, he returned to Babol to complete his work.
The two governments rapidly diverged after the 1979 revolution that overthrew the U.S.-backed shah of Iran.
For decades, Aaronson assumed his hundreds of students were swept up in anti-U.S. fervor. Meanwhile, many Iranians assumed he was dead, based on an orphanage official's erroneous comment, according to Aaronson and Iranians he contacted later.
The reconnecting began last year. Abbas Manesh, an orphan taught by Aaronson, had escaped from Iran to Turkey and made it to California as a refugee. He tracked Aaronson via another ex-Peace Corps teacher and the computer search engine Google.
Aaronson hesitated to make contact. As a Jew, he's concerned about Iran's repeated threats to annihilate the Jewish state of Israel. He's pretty sure his students and his host family had no idea he was Jewish.
Yet he remembered so much so fondly, such as the two beautiful daughters at his house - Sadegh and Asemeh - who wore stylish Western clothing under their Islamic "chador" gowns.
Meeting, phone calls
Aaronson flew with his wife, Evelyn, carrying immaculate photo albums, to meet with Manesh in San Jose, Calif. Manesh had arranged telephone hookups with former students in Iran.
Aaronson continued these conversations, eventually reaching one of the orphans he especially remembered, Mostafa, who had become a physics teacher.
"His English was perfect," Aaronson said. "He was starting to cry as we were talking. It affected me. ... He said: 'I can't thank you enough for teaching me English and opening doors for me so that I could go on to college and be successful."'
One night last April, Piruz Nahreini, 49 - an Iranian- American scientist at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center who was a soccer-playing cousin in Aaronson's host family and now lives in Broomfield - was rummaging through a box.
He found a letter from his aunt that mentioned her former renter Norm Aaronson who, according to an orphanage official, had died of cancer. Nahreini says he always revered Aaronson at family feasts and for his willingness to try to teach him English.
On a whim, he clicked on Google and found an Aaronson here in Colorado at the CU law school.
"I ran to my wife. I said: 'I can't believe it! This guy who is dead, a relative of his is a professor at CU!"'
Nahreini sent an e-mail marked "salaam" (peace), saying he knew this was odd but he used to know a teacher named Aaronson in Iran who loved good food, especially eggplant stew.
The next morning at CU, Aaronson read it in awe.
"Yes! It is me!" he wrote back on April 13.
Host family found
This connection, he says today, "was amazing. Piruz was my connection to the family. I didn't have a way to contact them. I'd lost their address, written in Farsi. And here he is, right here."
Nahreini put Aaronson in touch with his aunt Salar.
"So good to hear your voice," she told him.
Now, amid multiplying e-mails and phone conversations, Aaronson and his friends are considering a possible face-to-face meeting in Iran, Aaronson said.
"I'm not sure it's all that safe for Americans," he told Nahreini last month as they looked over old photos in Aaronson's law school office.
Nahreini encouraged him anyway.
He visited Iran recently., He says government positions needn't thwart people-to-people initiatives.
"People by nature are good," Nahreini said. Aaronson "could have ignored my e-mail, or he could have said: 'Sorry, you've got the wrong man.' And I could have said: 'Well, the Palestinians are suffering. I don't want to get in touch.' But that's not the way our minds work, apparently. Our minds are more in tune with the language of compromise and peace," he said.
"I have a feeling that, if the United States drops an atomic bomb, I'm still going to call Norm the next day."
Staff writer Bruce Finley can be reached at 303-954-1700 or bfinley@denverpost.com.
