CHEYENNE — I witnessed a celebration the night the Shah of Iran lost his power and his country.
It was 1979 — 46 years ago —and I was spending the weekend at Loretto Heights University in Denver.
I was enrolled in their “University Without Walls” distance learning program for adults, a new idea also being pioneered by 11 other colleges and universities in the U.S.
I had the luck to be working for a newspaper that encouraged continuing education and paid more than half the tuition.
The plan was to cobble together all the college credits you had and add credit assigned to your post-college work and employment.
I had plenty of science credits from my nursing courses at the University of Iowa Hospital's three-year certificate program.
After working for several years as a registered nurse I moved and switched careers to journalism for a variety of family-related reasons.
To reach my goal of a bachelors degree, I needed a variety of liberal arts courses like history, English and economics.
As part of the Loretto Heights program I was required to spend a certain amount of time on the lovely old Denver campus during weekends.
I had heard the college was admitting foreign students.
But when I visited the campus and inquired, my counselors, all Loretto veteran educators, just rolled their eyes.
They didn’t like what was happening to their institution, which was founded by nuns as an all-girls Catholic school, and later went co-ed.
When I entered the dormitory I was surprised to be greeted by several young men, all wearing black suits and white shirts with no ties.
One insisted on taking my bag and escorting me to my room, chatting with a strong accent, but understandable.
He and the others like him kept smiling. They offered to get me a drink, a snack, whatever.
That night I was studying in my room very late when I heard a commotion with a lot of shouting and banging outside.
“The shah is dead,” the young guys yelled as they ran in the hallways of the dorm.
They were Iranians. And they were joyous — jumping up and down joyous
Of course, the shah wasn’t dead. He was, however, forced by the Islamist revolt to to leave his country for safety in Egypt, where he died a year later of cancer.
The insurgents had toppled an ancient monarchy for what turned eventually into a theocracy controlled by Shia supreme leaders.
These ultra-strict religious leaders now rule a country of 92 million citizens through oppressive laws that are particularly cruel for women.
I thought recently of those polite young guys at the Denver school and wondered if this regime is what they were hoping for.
Or if they ever returned to Iran.
Most of the educated people in Iran leave the country, according to internet sources. Who can blame them?
Meanwhile my goal to obtain a bachelor’s degrees was not easy to attain with a full-time job and a very demanding editor.
My good counselors put together a program listing where to find those necessary courses wherever they could.
I ended up taking several at the local community college, where I found superb teachers, especially in history.
The rest was a hodgepodge. I worked through snail mail with professors at the University of Wyoming in Laramie and somewhere in Maine.
The most difficult task was writing a semi-thesis explaining the work of a newspaper reporter.
Part of the program required my counselor to visit me in my home, at least twice as I recall.
A very nice young woman, she drove up from Denver with plans to leave later the same day.
Then it snowed and snowed and the wind blew. The roads to Denver closed.
She stayed all night, but the next day it snowed some more. But then the roads finally opened. And she was gone.
She never came back to Cheyenne to see me. From then on I had to drive to Denver.
I received my bachelor’s degree in journalism late in 1979.
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Contact Joan Barron at 307-632-2534 or jmbarron@bresnan.net
