Ponte Vedra Beach Man Recalls His Year Spent In Iranian Jail

Floridian was one of 53 hostages, only at the embassy three months.

For Al Golacinski, the big surprise was being treated as an American hero.

The 444 days he had spent as a hostage in Iran had been “humiliating to us as individuals,” remembers the 59-year-old resident of Ponte Vedra Beach.

On Nov. 4, 1979, Golacinski, then the 29-year-old State Department civilian security chief at the American embassy in Tehran, was taken prisoner as demonstrators, many of them Iranian students, overran the American embassy.

Finally released on Jan. 20, 1981, the 53 American hostages returned to the United States not knowing what to expect.

Most, like Golacinski, just wanted to resume lives put on hold for 14½ months.

“I wanted a cheeseburger and a chocolate milkshake,” Golacinski said. “I wanted to return to normalcy ... The most important thing to me was to get back to work.”

But a return to normalcy wouldn’t happen for a while.

The America Golacinski remembered was a country that had been deeply divided by the trauma of Vietnam and Watergate.

The country he returned to had been swept by patriotic fervor.

“I had never seen the country so united,” Golacinski said.

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