I was weeks away from graduating from Bridgewater State College. It had been a tumultuous senior year and it wasn’t over yet. Ronald Reagan was elected the previous November. John Lennon was murdered in December. The American hostages held in Iran were released in January moments after Reagan was sworn in.
I was taking a photography class and had been strolling around Dedham looking for interesting subjects. The billboard pictured above stood facing Route One near the edge of the parking lot of the current Staples. It had been put up at the beginning of the hostage crisis, with the tally updated regularly until it reached 444 days. On January 21, a representative from Ackerly Communications, who had sponsored the message, added the words “At Last,” changed the count to zero and painted over the tears that had been streaming from Lady Liberty’s eyes.
A little over two months later, on March 30, the president was shot by John Hinckley, Jr. in Washington D.C. And before I would walk across the stage in May to receive my degree, the country would be shocked by yet another act of violence when Pope John Paul II was shot as he rode through St. Peter’s Square in Rome.
Recent events in the news brought me back to that unforgettable senior year. The exclamation point and question mark added to the billboard after the hostages were released reflected the mood of many of us then, as they do today.
Jim Parr
Dedham Tales 