Frank Reed Still Trying to Find His Place in World

Two men, both held hostage in Lebanon. Two men, now free, dealing with their ordeal in different ways. Robert Polhill, released after three years, hasn’t lost his sense of humor, despite his battle with throat cancer. Frank Reed, held 44 months in blindfolds and bonds, is trying to find his place in the world. For both men, life is starting over.

After 44 months of blindfolds and bonds, of arsenic and aches, former hostage Frank Reed is trying to find his place in the world.

It hasn’t been easy. Jobless and living in a furnished apartment, homecoming for Reed has been pleasure fused with pain this fall. There have been holidays and birthdays, football games and homecomings, reunions with old friends and a sentimental journey into the past to review his life.

But what Reed has found since he was freed by his Shiite Muslim kidnapers in Lebanon on April 30 is that he is not the same man, that things are not the same, that life is getting shorter.

“The healing process takes time,” he said. “I’m trying to find out who I am, what America is, how do I fit into all of these things, where do I belong, where should I live, how am I going to pay the rent over the rest of my life.

“One of the problems about hostaging is you become very self-centered because your major concern is yourself,” he said. “And I brought that out with me . . . . I’m certainly a hell of a lot happier. But am I enjoying contentment and happiness? No. I’m not there yet.”

A triplet whose Siamese-twin sisters died shortly after birth, Frank Reed was a born survivor. Now he is trying to survive again, trying to complete his re-entry into the world.

He has launched a movement he calls “Hostagepeace” to work for the release of 13 Westerners still held in Lebanon. Most of them are believed to be in the hands of Shiite factions belonging to the Iranian-backed Hezbollah, or Party of God.

Reed calls them “our boys,” distinguishing his generation of hostages from new ones held by Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait last August. He has taken his movement to college campuses across the country on a lecture circuit that has been providing his only income.

He talks often of friends left behind, among them six Americans, including Terry Anderson, 43, chief Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press, and Thomas Sutherland, 59, acting dean of agriculture at the American University of Beirut. They are in their sixth year of captivity, the longest-held hostages.

Reed, who turned 58 on Dec. 3, lost his school and his property in Lebanon. He spent 11 weeks in a hospital after his release. Doctors found arsenic in his system. His weight dropped to 131 pounds. He talks of beatings and of months blindfolded in solitary confinement for twice trying to escape.

Fifi Reed, his Syrian-born wife 20 years his junior, said the husband who stepped out of captivity is not the giving, kind man she met and married in 1977. She was in teacher training at the Lebanese International School he founded and directed. He became a Muslim before marrying her.

Today, some of the romantic luster has given way to the reality of starting anew.

Fifi Reed, who moved to the United States in 1989 and works at a Boston insurance firm, helps support the family. She and son, Tarek, lived in an apartment with Reed’s mother, Leota Sprague, during the last year of her husband’s captivity.

“I’m coming out of Lebanon with nothing,” Reed said. “What I’ve left behind is the school, the income and the property that I owned.”

Fifi Reed said they are struggling financially. “Every now and then I have to resort to my parents, as usual,” she said, “but it is a struggle.”

Publicly, Frank Reed is adjusting much better than expected, his wife said. He is negotiating for a book and a movie and hopes to complete his Ph.D. in education at Boston College. He is healthy again, the arsenic flushed from his body, his weight back up to 176 pounds.

“Privately, it’s a bit hard,” Fifi Reed said. “I expected that and I’m facing it. A lot of Frank was a very spontaneous, naturally giving kind of person. Right now, I don’t see that.”

Tarek turned 10 in November. Reed had missed the boy’s last four birthdays.