Nights Were Toughest, Ex-Hostage Says : Freedom: ‘I will kiss the ground’ on returning to U.S., vows Santa Ana man.

Jack Frazier’s days as an American hostage inside a safe haven in Baghdad would pass quickly enough. The Santa Ana man filled the long hours scouring the home’s bathrooms and teaching a daily exercise class to 20 fellow hostages. On Fridays, he would cook for the other hostages sharing the house.

But after dark, the pain and pressure of captivity would bear down on him, the53-year-old construction superintendent said Tuesday. There was too much time to think aboutmistakes, about little slights to your children, your ex-wife, your girlfriend, your mother. It could drive a man stir-crazy, he said.

“I think the worst part that I had was the nights,” Frazier said during a phone interview from the hotel in Amman, Jordan, where he was taken with 13 other American hostages released Tuesday.

“When you shut the light out at night, your mind kind of plays games on you,” he said. “Incidents would pop back in my mind that I didn’t really handle too well.

“I may have got upset at my son. At the time, it wasn’t a major item. But when you wake up at 2 in the morning and say, ‘My God, I’m in Baghdad, and I’m a hostage!’ Well, it makes you place appreciation and affection on things that maybe were trivial before.”

After arriving in Amman, Frazier immediately called his daughter, Kimberly Albrecht in Santa Ana, and his mother and fiancee in his hometown of Whitefish, Mont. He will fly to New York today, catch up on some sleep overnight and arrive Thursday in Los Angeles, he said.

“I guarantee you,” Frazier said, laughing, “I will kiss the ground on arrival.”

State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler said the 14 Americans released Tuesday included six individuals from a list of 69 people in urgent need of medical care. Frazier, a construction-crew manager for San Francisco-based Bechtel Power Corp., is a diabetic who takes oral medication for the condition.

For the first two weeks after the Aug. 2 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, he remained at the Sheraton Hotel, where he had been living. Then, he and numerous other Americans were told to move to the U.S. Embassy or other havens. Frazier declined to identify his exact location.

Frazier said he spent the last several weeks in a two-story house, a hostage without blindfold or physical torture but trapped nonetheless.

“I was most certainly being held against my will,” he said. “We were told not to go outside for our own safety.”

When he left Baghdad, he said, it was with both relief and anguish.

“One of the toughest moments in my life was when I got into the vehicle and stood there and saw my friends who remain (in captivity). I found it rather difficult to even put the feeling into words. It’s been eight hours since then. . . . but it’s tough. They are friends for life, those people.”

Frazier said several weeks ago that he hoped “when this history finally is written and that last chapter is over, I will get a chance to read it.”

Now, he said, he hopes to find a new job and catch a couple home games of his beloved but beleaguered Rams.

“I think things will turn around for them now,” he said confidently.