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Podcast: Other Voices
Episode: Farmboy learns he can lead people as well as cows
Description: Rudy Pitcher calls his wife, Connie, his “combat buddy.”It’s not an exaggeration.Pitcher, now retired from his Army career, was stationed in Tehran in 1978. His wife and their three young children — ages 5, 7, and 9 — were with him.Pitcher had spent a year learning Persian-Farsi before he left. At first, life was peaceful, with the shah’s pro golfer teaching Pitcher’s two young sons to golf.But everything changed in a matter of months. That’s when the Islamic Republic under Ayatollah Khomeini threw out the pro-Western shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, ending...