Joe Stafford, a 1968 graduate of Notre Dame High School, and his wife, Kathleen, spent 36 years serving their country as members of the American foreign service, and their first assignment positioned them to be part of a drama that would be chronicled by Hollywood more than three decades later.
The Staffords were among six U.S. diplomats who escaped from Iran in late January 1980, just months into the Iranian hostage crisis. The escape was pulled off with help of the Canadian embassy and, as revealed decades later, two CIA agents. The episode became known as the Canadian Caper and was the subject of Ben Affleck’s Oscar-winning 2012 film “Argo.”
The Staffords met while students at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, and their escape from Iran prompted welcome home celebrations in both Crossville, Tennessee, Kathleen Stafford’s hometown at the time, and Chattanooga. The Scenic City event included ceremonies at both Lovell Field and the Civic Forum, a building between 10th and 11th and Market and Broad streets that housed the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce and other business groups, according to Chattanooga Times Free Press archives. It was demolished in 2003.
The couple was greeted by the Notre Dame High School band playing the school’s fight song, and the ceremony was attended by local dignitaries, including then-Mayor Pat Rose; then-Hamilton County Administrator Mike Mahn; then-City Commissioner Jim Eberle, a friend of the Stafford family; and then-U.S. Rep. Marilyn Lloyd, a Democrat who represented Tennessee’s 3rd Congressional District from 1975-95. Rose declared Feb. 9, 1980, as “Joe and Kathleen Stafford Day” in the city.