Ex-Iranian hostage, who visited Maine on his release, dies at 51

WASHINGTON – Richard I. Queen, one of the Americans taken hostage by Islamic militants who seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran, in November 1979, died Aug. 14 of complications from multiple sclerosis. He was 51.

Queen, of suburban Falls Church, Va., had been a State Department consular officer at the embassy for about four months when he was seized with the others. He was released in July 1980 after 250 days in captivity after Iranian doctors discovered an undetermined illness that turned out to be multiple sclerosis.

Upon his release, the first place Queen visited in the summer of 1980 was his parents’ summer home on the Ducktrap River in Lincolnville. Queen had pasted 35 photographs of the Lincolnville house on the wall of the room in Tehran where he was held hostage.

After the remaining hostages were released Jan. 20, 1981, Queen resumed his diplomatic career as an aide to the U.S. ambassador to Britain and as a consular officer in Toronto, but illness forced his retirement in 1995.

Queen received a good deal of attention after being the first captive released.

In a 2000 interview, Queen told the Bangor Daily News that he almost wasn’t set free.

“They didn’t want to release me,” he recalled in a telephone interview from his home. “It was the ayatollah who ordered them to. Nobody would argue with Ayatollah Khomeini. He was the chief potato.”

Queen endured extreme hardship during his more than eight months in captivity.

He was kept blindfolded and imprisoned in the embassy’s underground vault, which the hostage nicknamed “the mushroom.” He once was brought before a firing squad only to learn it was for his captors’ amusement. He lost weight and his health deteriorated. His extremities grew numb and he began to have trouble seeing and walking.

It reached a point at which he could no longer get out of bed.

A native of New York City, Queen graduated from Hamilton College in upstate New York in 1973. Though he never expected to pass the Foreign Service examination, he was delighted when he was accepted and quickly became an enthusiastic diplomat.

Iran was Queen’s first posting in the Foreign Service. He was in the country just three months before the raid on the embassy.

Queen, who was 48 at the time of his interview with the NEWS, said his multiple sclerosis had gotten progressively worse. He said at the time that he was barely ambulatory and was cared for around-the-clock by nurses.

Survivors include his mother and a brother.