Jacobsen Will Find Many Changes in the Family He Left Behind

When David P. Jacobsen returns home to Huntington Beach and the family that fought tenaciously for more than 17 months for his release, he will find that life somehow managed to go on without him--and changed dramatically in the process.

Jacobsen, 55, who was released by his Shia Muslim captors early Sunday in Beirut, will be surprised to learn that two of his three children have gotten married since his abduction on May 28, 1985, and that he is about to become a grandfather for the first time. Jacobsen’s family was unable to send him any messages during his captivity.

When Diane Duggan, 25, the youngest of his three children, is reunited this week with her father in Wiesbaden, West Germany, perhaps the first thing he will notice is that she is more than seven months pregnant.

His second son, Paul, 28, was married to his wife, Lori, only two weeks after the kidnaping. In February, the Rialto couple will have their first child.

The elder Jacobsen also will return to Southern California to find that his 92-year-old father, for whom he was named, is faring quite well in a Duarte retirement home.

“My father has missed a lot. Personally, I don’t want to remember any of the bad things,” Duggan, who lives in Long Beach, said Sunday, shortly after the White House confirmed that her father had been freed unharmed in Lebanon and was safely in the hands of U.S. officials in the war-torn capital of Beirut.

In her first interview 16 months ago, Duggan could barely speak. Each time she tried to talk about the father she feels especially close to, tears would well, clouding her emotions and forcing her to leave phrases unsaid.

But on Sunday, she was beaming, barely able to contain her excitement.

“I have never felt better; I feel just great!” she exclaimed.

And for the eldest son, Eric, 30, it will be time to give up his reluctant celebrity status as family spokesman. A stoic, private man, Eric Jacobsen has remained the guiding force behind efforts to bring his father, and the other American hostages, home safely.

For weeks after their father was abducted, the family refused all requests for interviews. At the time, they felt that attention should be focused on Jacobsen’s abduction in Beirut, not their reaction to the ordeal.

But finally the family members, in view of what they perceived as scant attention given the plight of their father and other American hostages by the U.S. government,began to speak out--mostly through Eric Jacobsen--hoping to rally public support behind their efforts.

Eric, in particular, became a strong crusader, traveling to Washington about a dozen times to plan strategy with members of other hostages’ families, to pressure government officials and to seek help from the Washington embassies of Middle East countries.

He appeared on television and radio talk shows and granted countless interviews. He even wrote and recorded a song to call attention to the Beirut hostages.

But in the end, he said, it was his strong hope and conviction that helped him through the 531-day ordeal that his father suffered at the hands of his Shia Muslim captors.

The only communication they have had with their father has been one-way, in communiques and a videotaped appeal to President Reagan from the elder Jacobsen to negotiate for the hostages’ release.

“I always believed my father would come home alive,” Eric said Sunday. “And if anybody deserves the glory for my father coming home, it is God. But we need to thank every party involved. There were efforts on many fronts.”

He said he will continue to speak out on behalf of the hostages who remain captive in Beirut--people, he said, that are now also family. But Eric Jacobsen said he yearned to return to the simple, private life he had before that day in May, 1985, when his father was abducted while walking to his office on the American University campus in West Beirut.

Surrounded by countless news media representatives Sunday outside his Huntington Beach apartment shortly after the siblings had received official word of their father’s release, Eric Jacobsen grinned when asked if he would miss the limelight.

Without hesitation, he answered, “I can’t wait to retire.”