WCAX.COM Local Vermont News, Weather and Sports-Part 1: Marselis' Memories

Part 1: Marselis' Memories

Burlington, Vermont - October 12, 2009

Anson Tebbetts asked me to put together my four favorite stories, there are a lot of stories over 40 years, but recently I have not done very many. I sit here at the anchor desk and watch others go out on stories as I used to.

This first one was done when we were waiting to do an interview for Dimension, the news magazine. It was January 1981, the inauguration of Ronald Reagan and the release of 52 American hostages from Iran, including the former Burlington School Superintendent Bill Keough. We were waiting in Waterbury for our interview and heard about a small church which had honored the hostages every day.

Marselis's script from January 20, 1981

Like the rest of the nation, people in this small community in the shadow of the Green Mountains were waiting and watching today, watching not only the inauguration of Ronald Reagan as the 40th president of the United States, but also waiting and watching for word from Teheran, the release of the 52 American hostages.

Here at the Waterbury Center Community Church where they have rung the bells for more than a year in memory of those hostages, they were waiting and watching once again.

Those who had rung the bells over the past 14 months were at the church again, waiting this time with increasing impatience for word from Iran. Time after time it seemed tantalizingly close, but still throughout the morning no confirmation.

Across the street in Donnelly's store, the same waiting and watching, as in homes and businesses throughout the country.

And then at noon, still awaiting word, Chip Everling rang the bell 52 times as it had been rung daily since a week after the crisis began. This was the last time.

Then, an hour after noon, the first word, from ABC (Peter Jennings: "The American hostages finally are on their way...") Still unofficial, but enough for those who had waited in Waterbury Center.

Anne White began, helped by her daughter. This time they pealed the bell for joy. 

They had planned to ring it 444 times, one for each day of captivity, but several others wanted to join in making this joyful noise, and so the bells pealed hundreds of times, an end to the waiting, an end to frustration, an end to humiliation, an end to the ordeal.

Marselis Parsons - WCAX News

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