Relatives Pinning Their Hopes on ‘Joe’ : Families: Even Terry Anderson’s sister says that, if only one American is freed, it should be Cicippio.

As hopes rose Saturday for the imminent release of American hostage Joseph J. Cicippio, the sister of Terry A. Anderson, the longest-held American in Beirut, said she and other hostage families feel that if only one captive is to be freed, “(we) would want it to be Joe.”

Peggy Say said Cicippio’s “family has suffered much tragedy, and his sister, Helen, is dying now and made an appeal through her doctors and nurses for them to let her see Joe one more time, and she said: ‘Then I can die in peace.’ . . . It would be an act of mercy and certainly the human thing to do, to bring him out, and not put the family through the agony and waiting. . . .”

Her comments came after the Revolutionary Justice Organization, a Shiite Muslim group believed to be a faction of the pro-Iranian Hezbollah (Party of God), announced Saturday that it plans to free an American hostage within 72 hours and released a photograph of Cicippio. The group claims to hold Cicippio, 60, controller of the American University of Beirut when he was kidnaped in 1986, and Edward A. Tracy, 60, a children’s book author and independent foreign-language book publisher, also held since 1986.

Cicippio’s brother expressed restrained optimism Saturday over the possibility of his brother’s impending freedom.

“We have gone through this many times before,” said Thomas Cicippio, 67, who lives in Norristown, Pa. “But we’re very excited that they released a picture of my brother, Joe, and that they said a hostage would be released in 72 hours. It is the group that’s holding Joe, but they’re also holding Tracy, so there’s no guarantee, but it looks much better this time; it’s more promising, so the possibility is there. But we have to bear in mind, it could be another letdown. We have to let it play out.”

Tracy’s mother, Doris Tracy, told the Associated Press on Saturday that she is hopeful her son will be set free. “It sounds as if something is stirring,” she said.

Say, who spoke at a Washington news conference, related a telephone conversation she had Saturday with Briton John McCarthy, who was freed Thursday by the pro-Iranian Shiite Muslim group Islamic Jihad after five years of captivity. McCarthy had been held with Anderson, 43, who was chief Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press when he was taken March 16, 1985; Thomas M. Sutherland, 60, who was acting dean of agriculture at American University when he was captured June 9, 1985, and British church envoy Terry Waite, who disappeared in 1987 while on a mission to try to free the hostages.

Say said that McCarthy described the others as being “in good health, mentally alert” and said that “they are in such good health that Terry and Tom Sutherland are tending to the tubby side.” But, she added, they are exercising and “frantically trying to get some weight off” because “they want to look good when they come out.”

She said that the men have a radio and that they monitor Voice of America “incessantly,” which, she said, was important for journalist Anderson, because “I know Terry’s need for news.”

Also, she said, “Terry knows that his brother and father are dead, so this is a nightmare that I can put behind me.”

Say said that McCarthy told her that the men were aware of her efforts and those of other family and friends on their behalf, and they did not believe such activities had prolonged their captivity.

“He said, ‘You cannot know at the times when we felt that the world had abandoned us and we would hear something of you or something of Jill (McCarthy’s girlfriend), and that hope kept us alive and kept us from despair, and it meant the world to us,’ ” she said. “So if, in fact, it did add some time, it was time well spent.”

She said she was scheduled to give a VOA interview later Saturday--especially meaningful this time because now she knows her brother listens.

“He’s going to be so proud, because his daughter, Gabrielle, whom he sent such a wonderful message of love to, did an internship with Associated Press this summer and took a summer course called ‘Headlines and Deadlines,’ so she seems at 14 to be pretty focused on becoming a journalist,” she said. “John assured me that Terry would be ecstatic at that news. I’m going to tell him (about) his daughter, Salome, starting school. I’m going to tell him that I have three grandsons that he knew nothing about.”

She added: “I’m probably going to chatter like an idiot.

Times staff writer Oswald Johnston contributed to this story.