Metrinko was a political officer with the U.S. State Department in Iran and a week shy of his 33rd birthday when student radicals stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took 66 people captive. In an international drama that seared itself onto the American consciousness, Metrinko and 51 others would remain hostages until Jan. 20, 1981, when they were released shortly after Ronald Reagan's swearing-in as president. In between, Metrinko spent months in solitary confinement, rarely interacting with his fellow hostages. He endured repeated interrogations and beatings by his captors, who erroneously believed the Farsi-speaking former Peace Corps volunteer to be a spy. These days, he mostly considers it ancient history, although he understands America's continuing interest in the crisis and the former hostages. "For me, it was a personal experience. For others, it was a national experience," Metrinko said in a telephone interview from his home in Carlisle. "But you move on. Maybe that's the definition of life - you keep going on. I started going beyond it the day I got home." Metrinko said many of his friends are younger than he is, and if the hostage crisis comes up in conversation, most of them "don't have a clue." "It's just not part of my friends' lives," he said. "You have to be at least 40 to know anything about it."
RPCV Michael Metrinko spent 444 days as a hostage in Iran, but Metrinko rarely thinks about and never dwells on the ordeal that ended 30 years ago today
For Metrinko, hostage crisis is ancient history
By David Singleton (Staff Writer)
Published: January 20, 2011
He spent 444 days as a hostage in Iran, but Michael Metrinko rarely thinks about and never dwells on the ordeal that ended 30 years ago today.
"It's not an important part of my life," the 64-year-old Olyphant native said Wednesday. "I have been doing other things since then and, like I say, it was a very long time ago."
Metrinko was a political officer with the U.S. State Department in Iran and a week shy of his 33rd birthday when student radicals stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took 66 people captive. In an international drama that seared itself onto the American consciousness, Metrinko and 51 others would remain hostages until Jan. 20, 1981, when they were released shortly after Ronald Reagan's swearing-in as president.
In between, Metrinko spent months in solitary confinement, rarely interacting with his fellow hostages. He endured repeated interrogations and beatings by his captors, who erroneously believed the Farsi-speaking former Peace Corps volunteer to be a spy.
These days, he mostly considers it ancient history, although he understands America's continuing interest in the crisis and the former hostages.
"For me, it was a personal experience. For others, it was a national experience," Metrinko said in a telephone interview from his home in Carlisle. "But you move on. Maybe that's the definition of life - you keep going on. I started going beyond it the day I got home."
Metrinko said many of his friends are younger than he is, and if the hostage crisis comes up in conversation, most of them "don't have a clue."
"It's just not part of my friends' lives," he said. "You have to be at least 40 to know anything about it."
After three decades, even he is fuzzy on some of the details of his captivity. The 1964 graduate of Scranton Preparatory School compared it to going to your 30th high school reunion and finding you no longer remember the names and faces. He was fortunate, he said, that he made a couple of oral histories after his release.
"If I didn't have those notes packed away, I wouldn't remember most of it. … It's no longer that fresh," he said.
After his release, Metrinko remained with the State Department for 15 years, including a stint directing an office within the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, where he was responsible for refugee programs in Europe, South Asia and the Middle East.
The events of 9/11 brought him out of retirement, and he spent most of seven years overseas, including five years in Afghanistan and shorter stays in Iraq and Yemen. Now semi-retired, he recently moved from Vienna, Va., to Carlisle, where he previously served as ministry reform adviser at the U.S. Army Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute at the U.S. Army War College.
He said he gets backs to Olyphant a couple of times a year. Although he no longer has any immediate family there, he returns to visit his godmother.
Metrinko emerged as one of the central figures in Mark Bowden's "Guests of the Ayatollah," published in 2006 and considered by some the definitive account of the hostage crisis. The book is subtitled, "The First Battle in America's War with Militant Islam," which Metrinko said is "a very apt description."
"If the White House had treated Iran differently afterward, we might have prevented a lot of what happened since," he said. "I'm not sure the U.S. government learned much from it."
He pointed to ongoing WikiLeaks controversy, where the release of supposedly secret documents has created security breaches and caused embarrassment for the government. The same thing happened when the students seized documents during the takeover of the Tehran embassy, and many Iranians suffered for it, he said.
"You would think the government would have taken steps to guard sensitive information better," Metrinko said.
In the only letter the late Harry and Alice Metrinko received from their captive son - just a few weeks before his release - Metrinko included the line, "Someday all of this will be funny."
He chuckled when reminded of it Wednesday.
"It is funny - not in a humorous way but in a when-will-they-learn way," he said. "I do laugh about some things."
Metrinko, who still has many friends in Iran, said he wouldn't mind returning there someday if the opportunity presented itself, although he is in no hurry - there are other places he wants to see.
He will not be attending a reunion of the former hostages planned this weekend at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. He learned about it after he had already made another commitment.
As for today's anniversary?
"Send me a card and make me a cake," he joked.
dsingleton@timesshamrock.com
