For Families, Jubilation and Frustration

It was the moment Ruth Polhill had waited on, prayed for, dreamed about since that terrible day in 1987 when her son was taken hostage by Islamic terrorists. But when it finally came Sunday, she was not quite sure she could trust her senses.

“I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe it. I had to see it,” she said from her apartment in Fishkill, N.Y., shortly after watching television broadcasts of hostage Robert Polhill’s emancipation after more than three years of captivity in Beirut.

The elderly widow’s jubilation at her son’s release was shared by other relatives as well as countless supporters and sympathizers, including the families of fellow hostages Jesse (Jon) Turner and Alann Steen.

But all three families also shared disappointment and frustration over the realization that Turner, Steen and five other American hostages in Lebanon will remain in captivity with no assurance of eventual release.

Over the last three years, the families have grown close, speaking to each other regularly by telephone. When Turner’s Lebanese wife, Badr, gave birth to a daughter several months after his capture, he was not able to share the event, but she sent videotapes of the child to the families of the other hostages.

Polhill, Turner, Steen and Mithileshwar Singh were abducted at gunpoint from the campus of Beirut University College on Jan. 24, 1987. Singh was released in 1988.

Until Polhill’s actual release, it was not clear which of the three would be set free. Many people--including Ruth Polhill--initially speculated that it would be Turner, because the kidnapers had released his picture last Wednesday when they announced they would be setting one of their prisoners free.

When Ruth Polhill saw that it instead was her son, “I was speechless,” she said in a telephone interview Sunday afternoon, her voice weary but patient. “It was like a numb sensation, just seeing it and wondering if I was dreaming.”

As soon as she convinced herself it was for real, she began worrying about her son’s health. Polhill, a diabetic who requires daily injections of insulin, appeared drawn and pale in a televised interview recorded as he was being transported by car from Lebanon to Syria and in a later press conference in Damascus.

“He looked so different to me. Thin, and he talked so slowly. I just wondered how well he was,” she said. “But he’s out, and he’s got spirit in him, I know that.”

She said she had not yet spoken with her son but received a call from President Bush, one of many people who called to congratulate her. She said she will not be able to travel overseas and planned instead to greet him in Washington upon his return.

Polhill’s Lebanese wife, Firyal, traveled to Damascus last week in case her husband was released by his captors, members of a radical group known as the Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine.

His two sons from his first marriage, Brian and Stephen Polhill, who share an apartment in Queens, N.Y., will travel to West Germany soon to be reunited with him, Ruth Polhill said.

Interviewed by United Press International, Stephen, 26, said Sunday: “It’s not a feeling I can describe, I’m very elated. I’m a little concerned for the families of Jesse Turner and Alann Steen.”

Stephen Polhill said that his father “looked a lot better than I would have ever imagined. We’ve seen pictures over the last few years; they’ve looked very bad. It looks like he needs a well-cooked meal.”

UPI reported that Brian Polhill, 23, was equally jubilant. “I got a piece of pizza in one hand and a glass of champagne in the other,” he said.

After learning that her son had been released, Ruth Polhill celebrated in her apartment with a few family members and friends. She gave an interview through the window of her apartment to half a dozen reporters who had waited outside and talked to dozens more over the constantly ringing telephone.

Throughout her son’s captivity, Ruth Polhill said she has been concerned about the state of his health and his access to insulin. No family members have had any contact with him since his abduction, she said, and they had no way to determine how he was bearing up. “I thought with all of the bombs bursting . . . there could be a slip-up with getting his insulin to him,” she said. “He had to get that insulin every day.”

Ruth Polhill, who last saw her son during the Christmas holidays in 1985, said she has been told by State Department officials that he will be kept under observation for some time to ensure that he is in good health.

“I know that after a week or two in the hospital, he’ll be back to, maybe not normal health, but he’ll be himself again,” she said.

For the families of the two hostages left behind, it was a fateful decision.

In Boise, Ida., as the news trickled in over television that it was Polhill that had been released, Turner’s mother, Estelle Ronneburg, struggled to maintain her composure.

“It can’t help but hurt a little bit, because I had hopes that it would be Jon,” Ronneburg, 68, said softly.

“I’m happy for Mrs. Polhill because I know she’s been very worried about him because of his diabetes. I hope maybe they’ll release another hostage.”

Ronneburg, surrounded in her small living room by reporters and television cameras, watched solemnly as the first interview with Polhill came across the screen.

When reporters asked if she would prefer that they leave and allow her to be alone, she replied: “No. I need people around me. I’m kind of numb right now.”

Eugene Ronneburg said the news that his stepson, Turner, had not been released actually did not come as a surprise.

“We really didn’t believe it would be Jon,” he said. “We both knew down really deep that it would be an older one. It isn’t something we haven’t thought about or realized. So we’re really happy for her (Polhill’s mother). Estelle and I learned long ago not to get too excited.”

In the days preceding the release, Estelle Ronneburg, a bank accounting clerk, had said repeatedly that she was trying to hold her emotions in check.

“I’ve been down this road before,” she said, alluding to the 1988 release of Singh and the numerous false reports that her son was about to be freed. “It’s difficult to come back from that kind of letdown.”

Ronneburg said she remains optimistic. “I know I’m going to get him back,” she said.

In Clark Lake, Mich., Virginia Steen spoke to reporters in front of her parents’ small, lake-front home. Sunday was her husband’s 55th birthday, but it was a difficult one to celebrate.

“It’s wonderful,” Virginia Steen said of Polhill’s release. “I hope he’ll bring news of Alann, and I hope that this will be the first of others to be released.”

She said she wants to speak with Polhill to find out as much as she can about her husband.

“I hope to talk to Robert after he gets his strength up,” she said. “I hope to talk to him since they were all held together.”

Tumulty reported from Croton on Hudson, N.Y., and Harris from Boise, Ida. Times staff writer Jim Risen, in Clark Lake, Mich., also contributed to this story.