Iran is in the news, as it has been for 50 years, but more so now as President Donald Trump resolves the chaos Jimmy Carter unleashed when he ushered the shah out and the ayatollah into Iran. I wish my friend Moody Rudolph Tidwell, III, were watching it, but he died earlier this month at his quiet home in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. He was 87. I value his quiet wisdom, his sparkling sense of humor, his courage, and that he was there at the end of the beginning.

January 20, 1981 — Inauguration Day — was a federal holiday. As thousands gathered for the swearing in of Ronald Reagan, Tidwell, as counselor to Secretary of the Interior-designate James G. Watt, stood watch at the Department of the Interior’s vast but empty building.