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Why do we put up yellow ribbons during wars, hostage crises,
etc.?
01-Mar-1991
Dear Cecil:
Everywhere I went during the Persian Gulf war I saw yellow ribbons tied around oak trees,
light poles, small animals, etc. These supposedly were to show concern for our troops in
the Middle East. However, as I recall, in the song (you know, "tie a yellow ribbon
round the old oak tree," blah blah blah) the guy in question is returning from jail.
Presumably he went to jail for a reason. Do the troops really appreciate being compared to
a criminal? A friend tells me that the song is based on a true story, and that the
fellow's crime was something along the lines of stealing bread to feed orphans. True? And
why yellow? --Steve Langer, Chicago
Dear Steve:
After a heroic research effort involving New Jersey talent agents, Iran-hostage spouses,
and the Library of Congress, I think I've finally pieced together the whole story on
yellow ribbons. Here are the highlights:
Yellow ribbons first emerged as a national symbol in January 1981, when they sprouted like
weeds to welcome home the Americans held hostage in Iran. The whole thing was started by
Penelope (Penne) Laingen, wife of Bruce Laingen, U.S. charge d'affaires in Teheran. Ms.
Laingen says she was inspired by two things: (1) the song Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round
the Ole Oak Tree, written in 1972 by Irwin Levine and Larry Brown and made famous by
Tony Orlando and Dawn, and (2) the prior example of one Gail Magruder. Ms. Laingen writes:
"Gail Magruder, wife of Jeb Stuart Magruder of Watergate fame, put yellow ribbons on
her front porch to welcome her husband home from jail. This event was televised on the
evening news.
"At this point ... I stepped in to change the legend and song from the return of a
forgiven prodigal to the return of an imprisoned hero. Interestingly, I had remembered the
Gail Magruder ribbons, but I had only a vague understanding of the Levine-Brown song
lyrics, although I knew it involved a 'prisoner,' which my husband surely was in
Iran."
Penne's aim, and that of the other hostage families she was in contact with, was to keep
public attention focused on the prisoners. Various ideas had been proposed or tried early
on, including asking people to turn on their porch and car lights, honk their horns, ring
church bells, display the flag, wear Vietnam-type POW bracelets, etc. But none of these
schemes proved satisfactory.
Finally Penne hit on yellow ribbons. She hung one made from yellow oilcloth on an oak tree
in her front yard in December 1979, and mentioned it to a Washington Post
reporter who was doing a story on how hostage families were dealing with stress. The
reporter described what Penne had done in her article and yellow ribbons soon were
appearing nationwide. When the buildup for the Persian Gulf war began the ribbons appeared
anew and now appear to be firmly established as a symbol of solidarity with distant loved
ones in danger.
OK, but where did the song Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree come from?
At this point the ribbon story starts to get a little tangled.
Larry Brown claimed he heard the returning-convict story on which the song was based in
the army. Apparently it was a widely circulated urban legend--so widely circulated, in
fact, that it got the songwriters into a bit of hot water. New York Post writer
Pete Hamill had related the story in a 1971 column with a few different details--for one
thing, the convict told his story not to a bus driver but to some college students headed
for Fort Lauderdale.
Hamill claimed he'd heard the story from one of the students, a woman he'd met in
Greenwich Village. He sued Brown and Levine for stealing his work, but the defense turned
up still earlier versions of the tale (Penne Laingen quotes a version from a book
published in 1959) and the suit was dropped.
A big difference in many of the earlier stories was that the centerpiece wasn't a yellow
ribbon, it was a white ribbon or kerchief. But Levine claimed "white kerchief"
wouldn't fit the meter, so yellow ribbon it became. In addition to being trochaic, yellow
seemed "musical and romantic," he reportedly said.
But it wasn't quite that simple. The 1949 John Wayne movie She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
featured a hit song of the same name, and the line appears in a 1961 Mitch Miller
songbook. A source who knows Brown and Levine says they (or at least Levine) privately
admit they got the concept of yellow ribbons from the 1949 song.
The movie tune was a rewrite of a song copyrighted in 1917 by George A. Norton titled Round
Her Neck She Wears a Yellow Ribbon (For Her Lover Who Is Fur, Fur Away). This in turn
was apparently based on the popular 1838 minstrel-show song All Round My Hat
(surely you remember it), which sported the line, "All round my hat I [w]ears a green
willow [because] my true love is far, far away." Doesn't scan (or parse) very well,
which no doubt explains the switch to yellow ribbons in the twentieth century. Songs with
green willows and distant lovers go back at least to 1578.
It's interesting that the ribbons and willows in these songs simply serve as a reminder of
a distant loved one, since that's pretty much the only significance of yellow ribbons
today. There is no suggestion of the returning prodigal such as we find in the
Levine-Brown song, or even of imprisonment, as was the case during the Iran hostage
crisis. So I guess we can say that yellow ribbons do have some grounding in tradition,
although it's ribbons rather than green willows chiefly as a metrical convenience.
Contrary to popular belief, there is no indication that yellow ribbons had any symbolic
value during the American Civil War. The notion that they did stems from the
aforementioned John Wayne movie, which featured soldiers in Civil War-era uniforms.
RIBBON RAP RIPPED
Dear Cecil:
The first widespread "yellow ribbon fever" was not in 1981 but rather 1973, when
the POWs were released from Vietnam. I distinctly remember newsreels of wives, daughters,
and sweethearts wearing or displaying this emblem when greeting their loved ones. In fact,
I believe the song's massive popularity at the time was due to popular belief that the
"prison" mentioned in the lyrics was the Hanoi Hilton.
The "white kerchief" you mention as a precursor of the yellow ribbon is alluded
to in medieval and renaissance literature as a token of affection from a fair lady to her
noble knight as he goes into battle. In fact, one of the pieces of "evidence" in
the trial of Anne Boleyn was a handkerchief she allegedly gave to one of Henry VIII's
soldiers. (Henry, enraged at this "proof" of adultery, had her executed.)
--N.G., Chicago
Dear N.:
It's possible yellow ribbons were displayed here and there in 1973, but they weren't the
national phenomenon they became in 1979-1981. I found no references to ribbons in
contemporary press accounts of the POW release. That's not surprising, because most of the
POWs were home before the song became a hit. The first POWs were released February 12,
most were home by the middle of March and the last was out April 1. Dawn's version of Tie
a Yellow Ribbon debuted on the Cash Box singles chart on February 2 at number 88 and
didn't reach number 1 until May.
--CECIL ADAMS
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