Hostage Killed in Lebanon Is Praised at Mass

Childhood friends, high school classmates and relatives gathered at a memorial service Saturday for Lebanon hostage William Buckley at the church where he was once an altar boy.

“I could tell you stories about when Bill was an altar boy,” Father Mark Hannon said during the Mass at St. Patrick’s Parish in Stoneham, a small town just north of Boston. “He used to stop and buy a couple of doughnuts to eat on the way to Mass.”

Buckley, the former CIA station chief in Beirut, was kidnaped by terrorists in March, 1984, when he was 55. He is believed to have died in the summer of 1985 after being tortured, but his body has never been found.

Buckley’s two sisters, Joyce Wing of Saugus and Maureen Maroney of Salem, attended the service with their families.

Navy Lt. Cmdr. Chip Beck, a longtime friend of Buckley’s who first met him 16 years ago in Indochina, delivered the eulogy.

“He wasn’t well known to the world, this man Bill Buckley, but the effect he had on people whose lives he entered was tremendous and positive,” Beck said.

Before the service, Beck said he remembered that Buckley had predicted his fate on one of the last occasions the two friends spoke.

“He mentioned to me that he might be kidnaped,” Beck said. “He told me not to let the bureaucracy wind its way down slowly so he might die of ill health or execution, which is exactly what happened.”

Buckley’s sisters said they hope his remains will someday be found so he can be buried at Arlington National Cemetery, which was Buckley’s lifelong wish.