Terry A. Anderson

Terry A. Anderson (born October 27, 1947)[1] is an American journalist. He reported for the Associated Press.[2] In 1985, he was taken hostage by Shiite Hezbollah militants of the Islamic Jihad Organization in Lebanon [3] and held until 1991. In 2004, he ran unsuccessfully for the Ohio State Senate.

Terry A. Anderson
Anderson in 1996
Born (1947-10-27) October 27, 1947
Lorain, Ohio, U.S.
Alma materIowa State University
OccupationJournalist
Known forHostage in Lebanon (1985–1991)
Spouse(s)Mihoko Anderson (div.)
Madeleine Bassil
Children2

Early life

Anderson was born in Lorain, Ohio and raised in Batavia, New York. He graduated from Batavia High School in 1965.[4] A professional journalist, he was in the United States Marine Corps for six years, serving as a combat journalist. He also served two tours of duty in Vietnam during the Vietnam War.[5] After his discharge he enrolled at Iowa State University, graduating in 1974 with dual degrees: one in journalism and mass communication, the other in political science. He then joined the Associated Press, serving in Asia and Africa before being assigned to Lebanon as chief Middle Eastern correspondent in 1983.[1]

Hostage in Lebanon
Main article: Lebanon hostage crisis

On March 16, 1985, Anderson had just finished a tennis game when he was abducted from the street in Beirut, placed in the trunk of a car, and taken to a secret location where he was imprisoned. For the next six years and nine months, he was held captive, being moved periodically to new sites. His captors were a group of Hezbollah Shiite Muslims who were supported by Iran in supposed retaliation for Israel's use of U.S. weapons and aid in its 1982–83 strikes against Muslim and Druze targets in Lebanon. He was the longest-held of the American hostages captured in an effort to drive U.S. military forces from Lebanon during the Lebanese Civil War.

Held at the same time were several other U.S. citizens, including Thomas Sutherland, an administrator at the American University of Beirut; Catholic priest, Father Lawrence Jenco; David P. Jacobsen, administrator at the American University Hospital of Beirut; Presbyterian minister Benjamin Weir; Jerry Levin, CNN's Beirut bureau chief; Frank Reed, head of the Lebanese International School; Joseph Cicippio, deputy controller of the American University of Beirut; Edward Tracy, a bookseller and writer in Beirut; and Professors Alann Steen, Jesse Turner and Robert Polhill.

Anderson was released on December 4, 1991, and says he has forgiven his captors.[6]

Post-captivity life

Since his release, Anderson has taught courses at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and at the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University. He has also been a talk show guest, a columnist, and a radio talk-show host. He has written a best selling memoir of his experience as a hostage, titled Den of Lions. He filed suit against the Iranian government for his captivity, and in 2002 was awarded a multimillion-dollar settlement from frozen Iranian assets. Estimates put the amount he actually received at $26 million.[7]

Anderson for some time lived in Nicholasville, Kentucky, teaching journalism and diversity at the University of Kentucky.[8] In 2009, Anderson joined the faculty of the School of Journalism at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Kentucky.[9][10] In November 2009, he filed for bankruptcy under chapter 7.[11] In 2011, he became a visiting professional at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.[12] In 2013, he acted as Honorary Chair of the Committee to Protect Journalists, a non-profit that supports press freedom around the globe.[13] In 2014, he moved to Hidden Village in Gainesville, Florida, to teach a course in International Journalism at the University of Florida.[14]

Philanthropy

With some of his settlement, Anderson and actress Kieu Chinh co-founded the Vietnam Children's Fund, which has built schools in Vietnam attended by more than 12,000 students.[15]

He also created the Father Lawrence Jenco Foundation with a $100,000 endowment to honor and support people who do charitable and community service projects in Appalachia. Lawrence Jenco was a former Catholic Relief Services director in Beirut who also was kidnapped. The two men met in jail.[15] Jenco, who died in 1996, wrote his memoirs, Bound to Forgive, to which Anderson wrote the preface.[16]

2004 State Senate campaign

In December 2003 Terry Anderson announced his candidacy on the Democratic ticket to represent the 20th District in the Ohio Senate. His opponent was Republican candidate Joy Padgett, who had been appointed to the seat earlier in the term. Padgett ran controversial ads suggesting that Anderson would be soft on terrorism: the ads showed Anderson shaking hands with one of his former kidnappers.[17] He received 46% of the vote[18] in a district that leans Republican; the seat has been held by Republicans since 1977.[19]

Personal life

Anderson has been married twice. He met his first wife, Mihoko "Mickey" Anderson, while he was a Marine stationed with the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service in Japan. They had one daughter, Gabrielle Anderson (born 1976). They later divorced.[20] In 1982, he married a Lebanese native from a Maronite Christian family, Madeleine Bassil; they had one daughter, Sulome Anderson, born in 1985,[20][21][22] three months after he was taken hostage,[23] who later became a freelance journalist based in New York City and Beirut. She gained publicity for a photo depicting her kissing her formerly Orthodox Jewish boyfriend with a placard stating "Jews and Arabs REFUSE to be ENEMIES."[24][25]

A fan of blues music, Anderson owned the Blue Gator from early 2002 until mid-2008, a blues bar in Athens, Ohio, which hosted regional and national acts.[15][26]

In an interview in the spring 1995 newsletter of the School of Journalism Alumni Association, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, by Will Norton Jr., Anderson is quoted:

Is there going to be peace in the world? I'm a Christian. I believe eventually there will be, at the second coming. I think we are moving into an era of greater, or if not peace, at least of greater prosperity. Think about it: In the last 10 to 15 years there are hundreds of millions of people in the world who are living in a greater degree of individual responsibility and freedom and perhaps dignity than there were 15 years ago. That's true in eastern Europe, in Latin America, even in Asia. That great process of history, of thousands of years of an increase in a dignity of the individual, seems to have been halted for a good period of time by the growth of totalitarian societies, and those are breaking up now. Certainly the totalitarian instinct has not gone away. There are a great many wars going on and struggles by peoples, but that ice jam, that blockage that was representative of the domination of a third of the world by communism, is gone. I think that's reason for great optimism.[27]

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References
  1. Barron, James (March 16, 1990). "A Lost American in Lebanon: After 5 Years, Trail Is Faint". The New York Times. Retrieved November 12, 2019.
  2. Specter, Michael (December 11, 1991). "Terry Anderson Receives Hero's Welcome at A.P.". The New York Times. Retrieved November 12, 2019.
  3. "Lebanon: The Hostage Crisis". December 1987. Retrieved May 12, 2017.
  4. "Bust of Anderson Finds New Home at Batavia High". The Buffalo News. April 9, 1993. A bust of former hostage Terry Anderson, consigned to a cluttered storeroom a few months ago after standing in the Genesee Country Mall during much of his captivity, is headed for a place of honor in Batavia High School. Anderson's classmate Stephen M. Hawley, to whom he had entrusted the bust, chose to donate it to the school from which they both graduated in 1965.
  5. Say, Peggy (1991). Forgotten. Simon & Schuster. pp. 9, 14–15.
  6. "KY: Former Mideast hostage Terry A. Anderson speaks to college". Apex MediaWire. April 15, 2010.
  7. Phillips, Jim (2008-06-25). "Anderson may lose Athens farm". Columbus Dispatch. Retrieved 2013-10-28.
  8. Alessi, Ryan (December 19, 2008). "Former Middle East hostage Terry Anderson to teach at UK". Lexington Herald-Leader.
  9. "Former AP Reporter/Middle East Hostage Teaching at UK". University of Kentucky News. January 15, 2009. Archived from the original on January 17, 2009.
  10. "Terry Anderson Gives University of Kentucky Students a Global Perspective". YouTube.com. September 25, 2009.
  11. Phillips, Jim (November 13, 2009). "Terry Anderson, ex-hostage, files for bankruptcy". The Columbus Dispatch. Archived from the original on January 22, 2013.
  12. McChesney, Charles (April 30, 2011). "Ex-hostage Terry Anderson to teach at Syracuse University's Newhouse School next year". The Post-Standard. Syracuse, New York. Retrieved May 12, 2017.
  13. "About CPJ: Board of Directors". Retrieved 2013-10-28.
  14. Schweers, Jeff (May 3, 2014). "Former hostage Terry Anderson, who will teach at UF, remains passionate about journalism: Terry Anderson is still settling into his new home in Hidden Village and getting to know the lay of the land". The Gainesville Sun. Gainesville, Florida. Retrieved May 12, 2017.
  15. Kiesewetter, John (February 9, 2002). "Terry Anderson talks tough: Ex-hostage would like to tell Daniel Pearl's kidnappers, 'You've made a mistake. It's never going to work.'". Cincinnati Enquirer. Retrieved May 12, 2017.
  16. Jenco, Lawrence Martin (May 1995). Bound to Forgive: The Pilgrimage of Reconciliation of a Beirut Hostage. Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press. ISBN 978-0877935544.
  17. Ridgeway, James (Oct 19, 2004). "GOP Target: Terry Anderson". The Village Voice.
  18. "2004 election results". Ohio Secretary of State. November 2004. Archived from the original on June 21, 2006.
  19. Fischer, Ben (December 30, 2003). "Anderson announces candidacy". Parkersburg News and Sentinel. Archived from the original on November 23, 2004.
  20. Sun Sentinel: "Anderson`s Fiancee Kept Quiet Watch" By MARJORIE WILLIAMS December 18, 1991
  21. Deseret News: "TERRY ANDERSON: DEN OF LIONS; HOSTAGE'S LIFE FULL OF PAIN AND MEMORIES" From Den of Lions: Memoirs of Seven Years By Terry Anderson Published September 30, 1993 by TMS Corp.
  22. New York magazine: "I’m Arab-American. My Boyfriend Is Jewish. A Selfie of Us Kissing Has Become a Viral Symbol of Peace." By Sulome Anderson July 22, 2014
  23. Seattle Times: "Anderson family: Life after ordeal in Beirut had its share of torture" By Tom Raum February 16, 2000
  24. Al Arabiya: "Kiss and tell: Arab-Jewish peck goes viral" July 22, 2014
  25. New York Daily News: "Arab-Jewish couple kiss in Twitter picture to support peace in Gaza", by Carol Kuruvilla July 22, 2014
  26. Phillips, John (July 3, 2012). "Former blues-bar building purchased for $450,000". The Athens News. Athens, Ohio. Retrieved May 12, 2017.
  27. All American Speakers: "Biography of Terry Anderson" retrieved July 28, 2014
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