Terry Anderson, AP reporter kidnapped in Lebanon and held captive for years, has died

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Terry Anderson, the Associated Press correspondent who became one of America’s longest-serving hostages after he was snatched from a street in war-torn Lebanon in 1985 and held for nearly seven years, has died at 76 years. .

Anderson, who chronicled his kidnapping and torturous imprisonment by Islamic militants in his best-selling 1993 memoir, “Den of Lions,” died Sunday at his home in Greenwood Lake, New York, said his daughter, Sulome Anderson.

Anderson died of complications from recent heart surgery, his daughter said.

“Terry was deeply committed to eyewitness reporting on the ground and demonstrated great courage and determination, both in his journalism and during the years he was held hostage. We are so appreciative of the sacrifices he and his family have made as a result of his work,” said Julie Pace, AP senior vice president and executive editor.

“He never liked being called a hero, but that’s what everyone insisted on calling him,” Sulome Anderson said. “I saw him a week ago and my partner asked if he had anything on his bucket list, anything he wanted to do. He said: ‘I have lived a lot and done a lot. I am happy.'”

After returning to the United States in 1991, Anderson led a peripatetic life, giving public speeches, teaching journalism at several major universities, and, at various times, running a blues bar, a Cajun restaurant, a horse farm, and a gourmet restaurant.

He also battled post-traumatic stress disorder, gained millions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets after a federal court found the country played a role in his capture, and then lost most of them to bad investments. He filed for bankruptcy in 2009.

Upon retiring from the University of Florida in 2015, Anderson settled on a small horse farm in a quiet rural area of ​​northern Virginia that he had discovered while camping with friends. `

“I live in the country and the weather is reasonably nice and calm here and it’s a nice place, so I’m fine,” he said with a laugh during a 2018 interview with the Associated Press.

In 1985, he became one of several Westerners kidnapped by members of the Shi’ite Muslim group Hezbollah during a period of war that plunged Lebanon into chaos.

After his release, he returned to a hero’s welcome at AP headquarters in New York.

As AP’s chief Middle East correspondent, Anderson had been reporting for several years on the growing violence plaguing Lebanon as the country waged war with Israel, while Iran funded militant groups trying to overthrow its government.

On March 16, 1985, a day off, he took a break to play tennis with former AP photographer Don Mell and was dropping Mell off at his home when armed kidnappers dragged him from his car.

He was likely targeted, he said, because he was one of the few Westerners still in Lebanon and because his role as a journalist aroused suspicion among Hezbollah members.

“Because in their terms, people who ask questions in strange and dangerous places have to be spies,” he told the Virginia newspaper The Review of Orange County in 2018.

What followed were nearly seven years of brutality during which he was beaten, chained to a wall, threatened with death, often had guns pointed at his head and was often kept in solitary confinement for long periods of time.

Anderson was the most detained of several Western hostages kidnapped by Hezbollah over the years, including Terry Waite, the former envoy of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who arrived to try to negotiate his release.

By his and other hostages’ accounts, he was also the most hostile prisoner, constantly demanding better food and treatment, discussing religion and politics with his captors, and teaching other hostages sign language and where to hide messages so they could communicate privately. .

He managed to maintain a quick wit and a biting sense of humor throughout his long ordeal. On his last day in Beirut, he called the leader of his captors to his room to tell him that he had just heard a wrong report on the radio that he had been released and was in Syria.

“I said, ‘Mahmound, listen to this, I’m not here. I went, loves. I’m on my way to Damascus. And we both laughed,” he told Giovanna Dell’Orto, author of “AP Foreign Correspondents in Action: World War II to the Present.”

He later learned that his release was delayed when a third party to whom his kidnappers planned to hand him over went on a date with his party mistress and they had to find someone else.

Anderson’s humor often hid the PTSD he acknowledged suffering from years later.

“The AP hired some British hostage decompression experts, clinical psychiatrists, to advise my wife and me and they were very helpful,” he said in 2018. “But one of the problems I had was that I didn’t sufficiently recognize the damage that was done.

“So when people ask me, you know, ‘Are you over it?’ Well I do not know. No, not really. Is there. I don’t think about it much these days, it’s not central to my life. But it’s there.”

At the time of his kidnapping, Anderson was engaged and his future wife was six months pregnant with their daughter, Sulome.

The couple married shortly after their release, but divorced a few years later, and although they remained on friendly terms, Anderson and his daughter were separated for years.

“I love my father very much. My father always loved me. I just didn’t know that because he couldn’t show me,” Sulome Anderson told the AP in 2017.

Father and daughter reconciled after the 2017 publication of her critically acclaimed book, “The Hostage’s Daughter,” in which she told of traveling to Lebanon to confront and eventually forgive one of her father’s captors.

“I think she did some extraordinary things, embarked on a very difficult personal journey, but also accomplished a very important piece of journalism in doing so,” Anderson said. “She is now a better journalist than me.”

Terry Alan Anderson was born on October 27, 1947. He spent his early childhood in the small town of Vermilion, Ohio, on Lake Erie, where his father was a police officer.

After graduating high school, he turned down a scholarship to the University of Michigan in favor of enlisting in the Marines, where he rose to the rank of sergeant while seeing combat during the Vietnam War.

After returning home, he enrolled at Iowa State University, where he graduated with a double major in journalism and political science and soon after went to work for the AP. He reported from Kentucky, Japan and South Africa before arriving in Lebanon in 1982, just as the country descended into chaos.

“It was actually the most fascinating job I’ve ever had in my life,” he told The Review. “It was intense. The war is going on – it was very dangerous in Beirut. A cruel civil war, and I lasted about three years before I was kidnapped.”

Anderson has been married and divorced three times. In addition to his daughter, he leaves another daughter, Gabrielle Anderson, from his first marriage; a sister, Judy Anderson; and a brother, Jack Anderson.

“Although my father’s life was marked by extreme suffering during his time as a hostage in captivity, he has found a peaceful and comfortable peace in recent years. I know he would choose to be remembered not for his worst experience, but for his humanitarian work with the Vietnam Children’s Fund, the Committee to Protect Journalists, homeless veterans and many other incredible causes,” said Sulome Anderson in announced on Sunday.

Memorial preparations were pending, Sulome Anderson said.

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Biographical material for this obituary was prepared by retired Associated Press writer John Rogers. AP journalist Andrew Meldrum contributed from New York.