On Jan. 25, 1981, days after their long captivity in Iran ended, 52 former hostages and their families watched Super Bowl XV in the Thayer Hotel's wood-paneled Patton Tavern, where American flags were nearly as plentiful as the yellow ribbons at New Orleans' Superdome.
If they diverted their eyes from the colorful Eagles-Raiders telecast, these newly minted heroes could look out the tavern's windows and see both the ice-crusted Hudson River and the U.S. Military Academy, whose castle-like structures were citadels of a freedom they had been denied for 444 days.
One year earlier, their vantage point for Super Bowl XIV had not been quite so Rockwellian.