Durham woman recalls friendship with Jimmy Carter after Iran hostage crisis

DURHAM, N.C. (WTVD) -- From her sitting room in south Durham, Dotty Morefield recalled the mix of emotions when she learned her husband, Dick, had been taken hostage in Iran 45 years ago.

"Those first 24 hours we didn't know, and we didn't know if they had all been taken. We didn't know if they were all alive," Morefield said.

Dick Morefield was the Consul General at the American Embassy in Tehran when it was stormed by Iranian revolutionaries in November of 1979. He was one of 52 hostages held there for 444 days -- before the hostages were released just after the start of the Reagan administration.

"What you do? You can't sleep, you can't eat. You have children that you have to keep staying calm for and pretending that life is going on and that things are fine," Morefield recalled Monday.

In that uncertainty, Dotty Morefield developed a special bond with Jimmy Carter -- the president so often maligned for his handling of the crisis -- but the man who Dotty said suffered with the families.

"His anguish over the fact that he could not free them," said Morefield, when asked what stood out the most about Carter during those 444 days. "He agonized over that."

On the day after Carter's passing at the age of 100, Dotty's home is a window into history -- photos of the former president with her husband after he was freed, plaques commemorating his service, and the letter that Carter wrote Dotty after Dick died in 2010.

Dotty's son Steven -- who was just a teenager as his father sat hostage a world away -- said that letter was a gesture befitting Carter's character.

"He showed he was much more than a politician. He was truly a leader in this country," Steven said.

ABC11 sat down with Dotty in 2019 to mark 40 years since the embassy takeover. In that interview, Dotty read the telegram she received from Jimmy Carter on Jan. 20, 1981.

"The dignity and courage that you have shown during the months that you have waited for the hostages' safe return will be remembered - Jimmy Carter," the telegram read.

But Monday night, it was the Morefield family remembering the former president -- not just as commander-in-chief, but as the man who brought a father and a husband back home.

"Even though it may have happened 2 minutes after somebody else took the oath of office, it was still President Carter who brought my dad home. And that, I will always remember, and I will always be grateful for," Steven said.