17 Facts About Richard Morefield

Richard Henry Morefield was an American diplomat who served in the United States Foreign Service.

Richard Morefield was one of the 66 staff members at the American embassy in Tehran who were taken captive by a militant Islamist student group called the Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line on November 4,1979, in what became known as the Iran hostage crisis.

Richard Morefield was one of 52 Americans who were held as a hostage for 444 days, until negotiations for the remaining captives being held hostage were concluded with the signing of the Algiers Accords on January 19,1981, with their release coming the following day.

Richard Morefield served for two years in the United States Army, attaining the rank of first lieutenant and received his master's degree in 1954 from the University of California, Berkeley after completing his military service.

Richard Morefield joined the United States Foreign Service in 1956.

On November 4,1979, Richard Morefield was in the American embassy in Teheran, where he was serving as the United States consul general to Iran.

Richard Morefield was able to send a group of five Americans away by car who were able to take refuge in the Canadian Embassy.

Richard Morefield was with a group of about two dozen employees who had tried to leave the embassy compound but were captured a few blocks away by a group of students and Revolutionary Guards.

Richard Morefield was one of a group of six Americans who was at first taken to a school in Tehran, where they were placed in a shower room and had rifles pointed at them, marking the first of three mock executions he would ultimately face.

Richard Morefield took up a regular exercise regimen, doing push ups, sit ups and jogging around his cubicle for an hour each day.

Richard Morefield lost more than 30 pounds by the time he was released and joked that "if I'm smart, this might have added 10 years to my life".

Richard Morefield called his wife after they landed in Germany and told her that "those people tried to break us", but that "we beat them".

Richard Morefield was assigned to head the State Department's Office of Caribbean Affairs and was assigned to Mexico where he served as consul general in Guadalajara and as the economic counselor in the American Embassy in Mexico City, his final posting.

Amid reports in 2005 that newly elected President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had been one of the student radicals involved in the embassy takeover, Richard Morefield said he didn't recognize him as "I was not one of those on which they spent a lot of time".

Richard Morefield died at age 81 on October 11,2010, in Raleigh, North Carolina due to pneumonia.

Richard Morefield was survived by his wife, Dorothea, as well as by a daughter and four sons.

Richard Morefield recalled that the experience of dealing with the death of his son had given him greater strength to make it through the hostage crisis.