In November 1979, militant Islamists stormed the U.S. Embassy in Iran with the aim of taking the entire staff hostage, but six Americans escaped. After almost a week on the run in Tehran, one of them, Robert Anders, phoned a Canadian diplomat he occasionally played tennis with and asked for help. “Why didn’t you call sooner?” said John Sheardown. With his wife, Zena, he sheltered four of the Americans at his residence for the next 79 days, while the other two took refuge with Canadian Ambassador Ken Taylor. “Without [Sheardown’s] enthusiastic welcome, we might have tried to survive on our own a few more days,” said former embassy employee Mark Lijek. “We would have failed.”
Such acts of bravery were nothing new for Sheardown. Born in Sandwich, Ontario, he enlisted in the Canadian Air Force at age 18 and flew a bomber in World War II, “once crash-landing near an English village after limping back from an attack on Germany,” said The New York Times. With two broken legs, he managed to crawl to a nearby pub and ask for a Scotch. Sheardown fought in the Korean War, too, then joined the Canadian foreign service. He was posted to Tehran in 1978, just as the revolution “was bursting into full flame,” said The Ottawa Citizen.
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