Week in Review : MAJOR EVENTS, IMAGES AND PEOPLE IN ORANGE COUNTY NEWS : MISCELLANY/ NEWSMAKERS AND MILESTONES

While the release of Beirut hostage Father Lawrence Martin Jenco was good news for most, it carried a tinge of despair for Eric Jacobsen, 30, of Huntington Beach.

Watching during a newscast the videotape that Jenco had brought with him to freedom, Jacobsen saw and heard another hostage. When the newscaster identified the hostage as his father, David, “my wife and I almost fell out of our chairs,” Jacobsen said.

Jacobsen conferred with Reagan Administration officials as recently as July 17 and was assured that everything possible was being done to arrange for his 55-year-old father’s release, Jacobsen said.

But the sight of his father on TV shocked him, he said. “I didn’t react to his appearance. I reacted to the manner of his presentation. I could sense his fatigue and his disappointment and his anger. It brought out the exact feelings in me,” Jacobsen said.

“You look at my father in that videotape, and he believes that his captors are going to kill him--no doubt about it. His captors must have made it clear to him that if the U.S. won’t negotiate, he’s a dead man.”

The elder Jacobsen was seized by six gunmen on May 29, 1985, as he walked from his residence in Beirut toward the nearby American University Hospital, where he was director.

“They (the Reagan Administration) can say what they want publicly, but they’d better do something quickly to quietly negotiate,” the younger Jacobsen said. “My father believes nothing is being done.”