Biographical History
Penne (Penelope) Laingen is the wife of Bruce Laingen who was serving as the charge d'affaires of the United States Embassy in Tehran when Iranian student revolutionaries seized the Embassy on November 4, 1979, and held the staff hostage until January 20, 1981. A few days after Bruce was taken hostage, Penne Laingen hung a yellow ribbon around a tree in the yard of her Bethesda, Maryland home as a symbol of support for her husband and the other American hostages. She did this as a way to bolster her own strength and that of their three sons throughout the crisis.
From the guide to the Penne Laingen Yellow Ribbon Collection, 1979-1991, (Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center Library of Congress http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.afc/folklife.home)
