Maryam Zar writes: "In 1969 Parviz Adl was appointed Consul General in San Francisco. He founded the Iran & American Chamber of Commerce and inaugurated "Tehran Street" in Los Angeles. Then mayor of Los Angeles, Sam Yorty, presented Adl with the "Key to the City", and bestowed onto Tehran the accolade of "Sister City". During this tumultuous time in Iran, the residence of the Ambassador was targeted repeatedly by student protesters objecting to the rule of Reza Pahlavi, the Iranian King who represented a secular order rooted in globalized modernity, versus a clinging regression to the strict teachings of political Islam. Threatened often by phone and by mail, the demonstrators finally invaded the consulate in 1970, defacing walls and ransacking furniture, keeping the family hostage in a ground floor bedroom for hours until authorities intervened. A year later, the residence was bombed in the dark of night, damaging 50 houses nearby, and rooting the Adl family in the middle of the night - fleeing in Pajamas for a the nearby safety of a hotel willing to take them. Thus was the beginning of a volatile era, culminating in a revolution that brought Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini back to Iran from his exile in France, and ended the careers of many educated, well meaning, thoughtful and patriotic Iranians who had vested their lives in the modernization of Iran."

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An Elder Statesman Dies Taking Memories of an Iran Gone-By by Maryam Zar