Wait Ends for Anderson’s Ex-Colleague

My friend Terry Anderson is coming home, wherever home is, whatever shape he’s in.

He spent 2,455 days imprisoned by terrorists who kidnaped him because of who he is, not for anything he did. Like so many of the people he wrote about over the years, he was an innocent victim.

When I watched him on TV Wednesday from Damascus, with the broken eyeglasses and the battered grin, I was amazed that he still had a sense of humor. He’s going bald in the back, his hairline seems to have receded a bit, but that was the same Terry I remember from the old days.

He choked back tears in Damascus. So did some of us watching.

Six years, eight months and a couple of weeks. While Terry was in chains, his father died, his brother died, his daughter was born. An older daughter by his first marriage is now 15. When Terry last saw her, she was 9.

On Monday I sent the annual Christmas card to Terry’s sister, Peggy Say. Later in the day, hostage Joseph Cicippio was released. The next day Alann Steen was free. Wednesday was Terry’s turn.

I told Say that we hoped Terry would be freed by Christmas. I told her that we were praying for him, and for her. It was the same thing I’ve told her four or five times a year since 1985, when Terry was kidnaped. The words seemed so inadequate, just, “We’re praying.” But we wanted her to know that we missed Terry and admired her fight to keep his plight public.

When my wife and I met Terry in 1979, his home was Kamakura, Japan. In ancient times it was the capital of Japan, and it remains a lovely enclave of Buddhist temples on the seashore. Gabrielle, now 15, her mother Mihoko--whom we all called Miki--and Terry lived in a house on a hill not far from the train station in Kamakura.

Terry and I worked for rival agencies, he for the Associated Press and me for United Press International. We battled like Hatfield versus McCoy by day; by night we were friends, sharing a few beers, a couple hours of poker, tales of our past and thoughts about the future.

Terry had a taste for higher-stakes poker than I enjoyed and was a pretty good bluffer. Peggy Say wrote in her book this year that what she called her brother’s photographic memory helped him at cards. As a captive, he played solitaire. Say said his fellow hostages hated to play hearts with him, assuming he’d win.

Terry also liked wines and tried to learn more about them. He organized a wine-tasting group in Tokyo, though he wasn’t as pretentious about it as were most of the other members. “He would drink Ripple, if that’s what you had in the house,” Say recounted.

It was Terry who helped smooth our entry into Japan. My wife and I had lived in India for more than three years before going to Tokyo, but Japan was a culture shock, nonetheless.

Not all foreign countries are the same. India was the 14th Century, Japan the 22nd. In India you could usually dig up someone who spoke English; in Japan they studied English for 12 years, then refused to speak it.

We hadn’t been in Japan long when Terry invited us to Kamakura and showed us around. He pointed out this Buddhist temple and that Shinto shrine, the noodle shop with the good ramen and the sushi bar with the good sake.

Miki is Japanese. Terry had met her when he was in Japan as a Marine. Like us, they lived in a typical Japanese neighborhood, away from the “ gaijin ghettos” that appealed to foreigners.

Terry had been a Marine in Vietnam, and he was a tough competitor on a story. He and I covered boring press conferences in Japan and exciting upheavals in South Korea.

I remember the two of us in separate cars careening around the city of Kwangju, South Korea, during an insurrection. Ours were about the only cars on the road, and we kept tabs on each other during the days we were there.

It was Terry’s foolish attempt to get a photograph of South Korean troops retaking the city that prompted one soldier to shoot up my hotel room in Kwangju.

Today I can laugh at the sight of Terry and three colleagues crawling on their bellies out of the room, going much faster than you would have thought possible in that position. But at the time no one was laughing because the four of them nearly got killed. Later that day, we made the rounds of hospitals and mortuaries, making our own separate counts of the dead. The next night we were back in Seoul, drinking together at a hotel bar and comparing notes.

We were both directors of the foreign correspondents’ club in Tokyo. Terry was in line to become president but got transferred before he could take the top job. He and his family left Japan about 10 years ago, first for South Africa, then for Beirut, where he was the chief Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press.

As a foreign correspondent, you assume you’ll meet your fellow globe-trotters sooner or later. You don’t have to keep in touch, knowing that you can pick up in mid-conversation after a year, or five years, or even 10. So I hadn’t seen or talked to Terry for four years when he was abducted.

It’s funny what goes through your mind. I was driving home after midnight from a function at a Beverly Hills hotel on March 16, 1985, when news came over the radio that Terry had been kidnaped after finishing a tennis game.

My first thought was that I didn’t even know he played tennis.

I never thought he would be held captive nearly seven years. Through Iran-Contra and “arms for hostages.” Through the collapse of the Soviet Union as a superpower. Through Marines going into combat again, this time in the Persian Gulf.

In August, the hostage releases began. My wife and I assumed Terry would be last. So did Peggy Say and Terry. I didn’t want to jinx anything, so I didn’t stay up overnight Tuesday waiting.

When the clock radio woke us Wednesday at 5:30 a.m., it was with news of Terry’s release. I lay there taking it in, wondering what it felt like for him, finally free.

Fifteen minutes later came the bulletin that he wasn’t free after all, and my heart filled with hatred. If I felt this way, what must Peggy Say and his children feel?

Years ago, when he was first kidnaped and there would be the occasional videotape of Terry reading a message from his captors, my wife would always say that wasn’t the Terry she remembered. When she thought of him, he was smiling.

That’s what we were waiting to see, Terry Anderson with a smile.

It took hours after the confusion, but finally he was in Damascus, on live TV. He was smiling.

Needham is a Times Orange County Edition staff writer.