Veterans Day: Former Iran hostage works to honor those who died attempting to rescue him

One day years ago in the early 1990s, when Rocky Sickmann’s daughter was still in grade school, she came home and asked her father to speak to her class.

He asked why. She grabbed her history book that was wrapped tight with a brown Kroger shopping bag, opened it up and said, “Because we’re learning about you.”

The son and brother of men who served in the Army, Sickmann served in the Marines from 1976-1981 and was one of the 65 Americans taken hostage for 444 days during the Iran Hostage Crisis.

After the Marines, Sickmann worked 34 years for Anheuser-Busch before his retirement, where he now oversees the Budweiser account for Folds of Honor, a non-profit organization that provides academic scholarships to the children of wounded or killed soldiers. Since 2007, the group has provided 35,000 scholarships.

Working with Folds, which now has 32 chapters across the country, allows Sickmann to continually aid military dependents and honor the eight soldiers who died in an unsuccessful rescue attempt.

“Along with 65 other Americans our freedom, dignity and pride were stripped on November 4, 1979, and little did I know that I would have to spend the next 444 days in the darkest times of my life,” said Sickmann.

‘Death to America’

For the first 30 days, the hostages’ arms and feet were tied to a chair. The 400 days after that Sickmann was locked in a room with two other Americans. Over that span, the three went outside just seven times for 15 minutes. After a failed rescue attempt, known as Operation Eagle Claw, resulted in the death of eight service members, the hostages were moved from Tehran and sat for four months waiting until the Iran-Iraq War started. They were then brought back to prison for another four months from September through December in 1980.

Sickmann spent two Thanksgivings, two Christmases and his 23^rd birthday as a hostage, dreaming of his freedom each and every day.

“It was 1981, January 20, and they came into our room and after 444 days … they take us from our room, blindfolded, take us in, they lead us outside, I walk into something I hadn’t felt for two years, snow through my open-toed shoes,” remembered Sickmann. “They put us in a vehicle, drive about 30 minutes and all of a sudden, we hear the sound of an airplane. This was something you had prayed for, you had hoped for, you had cried for an opportunity just to have the second chance in life.”

“The vehicle stops right behind the airplane, the force of the jet is pushing against the vehicle that we were in, and they tell us to un-blindfold. We only saw a total of five people of the 65 for the 444 days. And here you are looking at people that you had breakfast with on November 4, 1979,” he explained. “And they take us one-by-one to the plane and they’re chanting, ‘Death to America.’ I hadn’t seen a woman in 444 days and a stewardess takes me up and puts me down and you’re freed, and you would think that you would be excited, jumping up and down, but they’re chanting, ‘Death to America’ and you’re boarding this airplane and you just don’t understand what’s going on.”

As a hostage, Sickmann experienced it all: mock executions, blindfolded trips just to use the bathroom, beatings and malnourishment, the tragedies go on. After all that, the captors still had one final trick up their sleeve.

“The plane gets to the end of the runway and they’re getting ready to take off and all of a sudden, the pilot comes on and says they turned the runway lights off. For 444 days, it’s the mind games that were played,” said Sickmann. “They waited 20 minutes until President Carter was out of office, and President Reagan was in, to turn the runway lights on and then taxi down the runway. And it wasn’t until the plane got off the ground and into Turkish airspace that the pilot had told us that we were now freed and we came unglued.”

Homecoming

Sickmann had met a girl before he left the States and told himself he’d marry her if he got the chance when he returned.

“And so I call home to speak to my mom and dad, my dad said, ‘Rocky, Jill’s here. And I said, ‘She waited?’ And he goes, ‘No, she wants to talk to you.’ And I said, ‘Well, that doesn’t sound good.’ She gets on the line and she says, ‘Rocky, you got to make a decision, either me or the military. But I can’t do this.’ I chose wisely,” said Sickmann with a laugh, and 40 years later the two are still together.

“For me, Veterans Day is thinking of those eight individuals that paid the ultimate sacrifice, their life, for my life. I now have three wonderful children, four grandchildren, and I can tell you that those individuals that died that morning of April 25 would never again be able to go fishing with their sons, walk their daughters down the aisle and hold their grandkids, as I have been able to do. I think about all those that have served, and especially those served giving their life for my life, how do you forget something like that?”

Ben Affleck and ‘Argo’

Sickmann and his wife were in Columbus, Ohio, in 2011 at a wedding when the father of the bride called him over and says, ‘Rocky, I want you to meet my sister, she’s a casting director out in LA, you never know maybe someday she’ll be able to help your son,’ who had grown with the dream of becoming a movie star.

“So what’s the chances three days later (the casting director) flies back out to LA, she’s emailing her friend asking her, ‘Hey, what are you working on?’ Her friend comes back and says she’s working with Ben Affleck, George Clooney, John Goodman and a cast of others about a hostage movie on the Iran hostages. And the girl we just met, she goes, ‘That’s interesting. I just met one of the hostages.’”

Just five days later Affleck — the director and star of the movie — had invited Rocky and his son, Spencer, to the set as well as the premier. Spencer was even in the movie briefly as an extra.

A stepping stone

Sickmann has been working with Folds of Honor since he retired in 2016, and the non-profit work as Senior VP of Budweiser accounts has been therapeutic for his downtime. It allows him to not only give back but also stay connected with those he used to work with. If anyone deserves to have his cake and eat it too, it’s someone like Sickmann.

That says, he still has his down moments. Being a hostage for 444 days and having eight people die trying to rescue you is a heavy load to handle and carry, but that’s why Sickmann tells his story every chance he gets. A psychiatrist once told him there are two ways he’d deal with the tragedy: keep it inside, but something’s going to cause you to break and one day talk about it, or use it as a stepping stone.

“Whenever I feel like I’m having a bad day, I think of those eight, and the man upstairs reminds me, ‘Would you rather be here having to catch a 6:30 a.m. flight, or would you rather be over in Iran where you had three rifles to the back of your head?’ ” he said. “If I can go through a mock firing squad, I can go through anything.”

This isn’t a story about golf – though Sickmann is frequently on the course for events and did make his first hole-in-one three years ago at Osage National Golf Resort in Lake of the Ozarks – it’s far more important. No matter where we fall on the political spectrum, we can all agree how important it is to take the time, not only on this one day a year, but to constantly remember and be thankful for those who served.

Said Sickmann: “Freedom does not come free, and these individuals are out there willing to sacrifice their lives and their years and we just can’t forget that.”