Polhill’s Sense of Humor Is Called Vital : Captivity: Officials are amazed at the professor’s mental stamina. He is reunited with his two adult sons.

A sense of humor so unflappable that even his captors admired it saw Robert Polhill through 39 dismal months of captivity in Lebanon, an Air Force doctor said Tuesday.

Freed hostage Polhill was reunited with his two adult sons and spent the day being prodded by doctors and State Department debriefers.

The officials expressed amazement at the 55-year-old college professor’s mental stamina.

“I’m very surprised he’s as feisty as he is and has got a sense of humor as he does,” said Dr. Kenneth R. Koskinen, an Air Force colonel heading the medical team treating Polhill.

Doctors found “no indications” that Polhill was beaten or tortured by the Islamic terrorists who held him, Koskinen said.

A U.S. official here speaking on condition of anonymity said Polhill evidently “never felt that he was going to be killed.”

Although medical tests are still under way, Polhill appears to be weak but in fairly good physical condition, Koskinen said.

“He lost a significant amount of weight and muscle mass, and . . . he looks much older than he is,” the doctor said.

He said that Polhill, a diabetic, received “appropriate” medical care from physicians who visited him during his captivity.

Polhill is “essentially emptying our kitchen, to say the least,” Koskinen joked, after the malnourished patient devoured two full dinners, a farmer’s breakfast and a pile of spare-ribs within 18 hours.

Serenaded by a German accordion player, Polhill munched the ribs in his hospital room during a lunch-time reunion with sons Brian, 23, and Stephen, 26, who arrived Tuesday from their home in Upstate New York.

Polhill was quoted as saying he did not feel “strong enough” to meet with journalists yet, and his family has refused interview requests, with his sons angrily blocking TV cameras with their hands.

Polhill is expected to remain at the military hospital for several days. He will face “the full barrage of questions” from State Department intelligence officers beginning today, according to Koskinen.

The senior surgeon told a news conference that Polhill is chatty and alert, showing no signs of “any type of mental aberration at all at this point.”

“I believe he’s doing quite well,” Koskinen said.

He said Polhill felt angry toward his captors but “channeled it” through humor: “He said even the guards remarked that he had a strong sense of humor.”

Polhill was almost completely isolated from the world beyond the single room he occupied with fellow American hostages Alann Steen and Jesse Turner, professors who were kidnaped from the Beirut College University campus along with Polhill on Jan. 24, 1987. A fourth professor, Mitheleshwar Singh, an Indian with U.S. resident alien status, was freed Oct. 3, 1988.

Other hostages were probably held in the same building by other “clans” within the fundamentalist Hezbollah (Party of God), said U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.

But they said Polhill may not have ever realized this and that the situation often changed as the captives were moved from hiding place to hiding place.

Since his release Sunday in West Beirut, Polhill has repeatedly expressed concern about the Western hostages still held, among them seven Americans.

“He said several times, ‘Whatever I can do or say to get them out, I will do that,’ ” Koskinen said.

The doctor indicated that Polhill may feel some reticence about discussing details with the media or debriefers because “he is very much aware that what he said may be misinterpreted” and could somehow jeopardize the other hostages.

“I want to make doggone sure that my friends get out of there as soon as possible,” Koskinen quoted his patient as saying.

The surgeon, who has worked with other freed hostages and terrorist victims who were treated at the medical facility before heading back to the United States, said Polhill is adjusting well.

“He has certainly re-entered very quickly and very well,” he said, “and he has a very positive mental status.”

Polhill has been peppering those around him with questions.

“He got reading material only very occasionally,” one of the U.S. officials said. “He doesn’t seem to be very aware of what was going on in the world. He didn’t know about the Berlin Wall falling. And, since he’s quite a sports fan, he’s asked a lot of questions about the World Series, and football.”

Polhill and his Lebanese wife, Firyal, are expected to return to the United States after he is discharged, but officials said they have no specifics about his plans.