CHAPTER 11

Hood: Let’s call us persecuted, is probably the right word. If you do a ‘Bahai Iran persecution’ Google search you will see some horrific things that started about one hundred years ago and continue to today. So as a religious minority, persecuted religious minority, it just made sense for my family at the time to kind of send us off to boarding school, and to relocate after boarding school to the US. We initially came over here because my father was doing some … He has a doctorate in veterinary medicine. He was doing some research at the university in Maryland on bees and honey bees specifically. So that’s what landed us here. And in 1979 Iran started to, you know … It had fifty or so more guests than maybe it should for a little while and that whole hostage thing led to an increase in the persecution, because of the Ayatollah takeover, and we were able to very justifiably claim religious persecution and head down the track of US citizenship.