Alumni

Bob Woog had been living in Tehran for almost four years when everything started to fall apart. It was 1978 and he and his wife, Barbara Jean, both AT&T specialists on temporary assignment to Iran’s national telecom company, had been working to modernize the country’s long-distance communication system. The couple had a one-year-old daughter, a settled life, and a network of Iranian friends, and their project was nearly complete when strikes and demonstrations rocked the nation. The Iranian Revolution had begun.

It turned out that his best friend was chief of staff for the resistance movement, which was fighting to topple the country’s monarch, the Shah. Despite Woog’s work for the Shah’s government, the ties of friendship would protect the American engineer and his family.