Patients ‘Adopt’ U.S. Hostages : Prayer Vigils Held at Hospital for 7 Lebanon Captives

Paralyzed down her right side from a stroke, 73-year-old Alice Mount absently picked at her meat loaf and mashed potatoes, engrossed in plans to pray for the safe return of seven American hostages remaining in Lebanon.

“I know what it is to be shut up,” said Mount, who has lived at the Hylond Convalescent Hospital in Westminster for the last 13 years. “How do you explain it? You can’t go where you want, do what you want. There’s no freedom.”

That longing for freedom, the desire not to be forgotten, is why Mount and six other Hylond patients have “adopted” the seven captive men and why all 99 patients bow their heads in prayer every day at 3 p.m.

Empathizes With Hostage

“I can imagine the room where he is being held,” Mount said wistfully of the hostage she has adopted as the object of her daily prayers--Huntington Beach hospital Director David P. Jacobsen, who was abducted May 28 by six masked gunmen at the American University Hospital in West Beirut.

Today, the wheelchair-bound patients will be joined in a “Freedom Day of Prayer” at the Westminster Civic Center with families of six of the hostages, who have come from around the country to meet the elderly people who refuse to forget their loved ones in far-off Lebanon.

Sponsored by the Westminster City Council, the city’s Chamber of Commerce and a host of local merchants and civic groups, the 2:30 p.m. ceremony will include a procession of the U.S. Marine Corps Marching Band, a flyover by a Marine helicopter and--Hylond residents hope--a moment of prayer around the world for the hostages at 3 o’clock.

Seven yellow rosebushes will be planted at the civic center, and a painting of the hostages will be put on permanent display as a reminder of their plight.

A special merit award will be given posthumously to Richard Dean Stethen, the young soldier killed by Lebanese terrorists during the hijacking of the TWA flight from Athens in June.

“We appreciate their concern,” said Eric Jacobsen, eldest of three children of the missing hospital director. “And their concern has not waned over a period of time, either,” said Jacobsen, 29, who works for a medical services firm. “I met briefly with them on the Fourth of July. They are still just as concerned and praying daily for the seven hostages. . . . They seem to relate to their condition.”

Although he had previously shunned public attention, Jacobsen said he was pleased about the ceremony in hopes that it would remind the world of the plight of his father and the six other men held captive in Lebanon--something he said U.S. government leaders have been unwilling to do.

“I’m at the point where I think the power of prayer is probably going to have more effect than the power of President Reagan. We can’t even get a public comment out of him on the hostages,” Jacobsen said Thursday.

Other Captives

In addition to Jacobsen, the other hostages are Peter Kilburn, 60, a librarian at the American University in Beirut reported missing Dec. 3; the Rev. Lawrence Jenco, 50, a Roman Catholic priest kidnaped Jan. 8; Terry Anderson, 37, an Associated Press correspondent abducted March 16; William Buckley, 56, a political officer with the U.S. Embassy in Beirut who was kidnaped March 18; the Rev. Benjamin Weir, 60, a Presbyterian minister reported missing May 8, and Thomas Sutherland, 53, dean of the American University of Beirut, who was kidnaped June 9.

“I can’t describe what it does for us,” said Glenn Anderson Jr., 45, brother of reporter Terry Anderson. “You feel like you are by yourself with no information. Then to find there are people out there like this, it’s like a solidarity between us,” said Anderson at a dinner in Orange County Thursday night attended by four of the hostage families.

It all began as part of the daily current events program, when news of the TWA jet hijacked in Athens last June riveted many of the Hylond hospital residents, said activities director Nancy Fontaine, who has spearheaded efforts for the special prayer day.

A special program for the Fourth of July was planned for the 39 remaining hostages. But the focus shifted to the seven men previously kidnaped when efforts resulted in release of the hijack victims on June 30.

Initiated Prayer

It was at that program, attended by Eric Jacobsen, that a frustrated Alice Mount brought forward the prayer that would be incorporated into a daily ritual for the captives.

“I feel so much better because we’re doing something to try to get them released,” the thin, bifocaled woman said as she wheeled energetically around other patients in the long hospital corridors Thursday.

“It gives them a dignity, an identity and individuality,” said Fontaine, who has donated a portrait of the seven men she painted in oils that will be dedicated as a permanent memorial to them at the civic center.

“It keeps them in touch with the world,” said hospital administrator Ruth Johnson. “It keeps them from feeling forsaken and abandoned.”

Fontaine said patient Dorothy Williams, 69, has come out of her shell after six years at the hospital and has joined in activities for the first time. Williams has adopted the Rev. Jenco for her prayers.

“If nothing else happened, that has made this all worthwhile,” said Fontaine. “But we all hope God does something for the hostages so the whole world will know a prayer was heard.”