Combative, Resilient Prisoner Kept His Zest for Life : Profile: Anderson learned French and farming from fellow hostages. He often mocked and debated with his captors.

Terry A. Anderson prided himself on being a quick study when it came to the Byzantine world of Middle Eastern politics.

And when three well-armed men snatched him off a Beirut street on a bright Saturday morning 2,455 days ago, the Associated Press’ chief Middle East correspondent instantly realized that he had badly miscalculated.

“Terry had the look of a man who knew he was doomed,” recalled AP photographer Don Mell, who was with Anderson but was not abducted by the Islamic Jihad kidnapers. Anderson felt betrayed--by his own instincts and by the Lebanese.

Earlier, as friends and relatives increasingly feared for his safety, Anderson was dismissive. He felt lucky to be in Beirut, practicing a craft he had come to love. “People in Lebanon know that I care about them. I’d be the last one they would take,” Anderson told them.

As his years of captivity wore on, the former Marine occasionally lapsed into despair, weeping uncontrollably at times; once he even banged his head against the wall until he bled, prompting a cellmate, Frenchman Marcel Fontaine, to summon guards.

But the passionate Ohio native also proved to be a resilient, combative man who managed to maintain his zest for life and his innate curiosity about everything around him.

From Fontaine, he learned French. From a fellow American hostage and expert on agriculture, he learned about farming.

Anderson’s ordeal in captivity was gradually revealed by the succession of released Western hostages. They said that Anderson, now 44, often mocked his captors, greeting them with “Heil Hitler!” But he also often engaged them in contentious political debates.

And he regularly went on hunger strikes that led to more reading material for himself and other hostages, including an occasional newspaper, as well as romance novels, the Bible and the works of Charles Dickens, Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Thomas Hardy.

To relieve more than 6 1/2 years of privation and brutality, Anderson made Scrabble and Monopoly games out of paper and cardboard; he fashioned a chess set from tinfoil before guards confiscated it. Using strings from floor mats, he made rosary beads.

Anderson also exercised regularly, often leading fellow hostages around their cellblock on imaginary hikes up Mt. Fuji or walks around Tokyo.

In more introspective moments, he vowed to endure his ordeal so he could straighten out a private life that he conceded was “a mess”--and to see a daughter born out of wedlock 83 days after his capture.

Until his release Wednesday, Anderson had to cope with more ups and downs than perhaps any other Western hostage. But even as he exults in freedom, friends and relatives worry about how Anderson will respond to more emotional traumas still ahead. For, even as he revels in hugging his daughter for the first time, Anderson must cope with the news that, while in captivity, his father--with whom he was extremely close--as well as a brother and several aunts have died.

“All of his life, as far as Terry was concerned, Dad could do no wrong,” says Peggy Say, a Cadiz, Ky., homemaker, who for 6 1/2 years has conducted a high-profile campaign to win freedom for her “little brother.”

“Terry’s release is not going to be a time of joyous celebration,” Say predicted in her 1991 book, “Forgotten.”

Several times during his captivity, Anderson thought he was on the verge of freedom, only to be let down. Six months after his abduction, for instance, his captors told him and several other hostages to decide among themselves who should be released. Anderson won--because he had never seen his daughter, Sulome, who had been born to his fiance, Madeleine Bassil. But the newsman’s elation was quickly dashed.

“Terry Anderson will not be the first to be released,” one captor snapped. “He might be the last one.”

A few nights later, it was the Rev. Benjamin Weir who was freed.

And in April, 1987, guards took Anderson’s measurements and shortly afterward gave him new clothes to wear--a sign that he might be freed. But a week later, they inexplicably took the clothes away.

Thus, Anderson became the longest-held and last American hostage in Lebanon.

He was born Oct. 27, 1947, in Lorain, Ohio. Later, the family, led by his father, a truck driver, moved to Batavia, N.Y., near Buffalo, where Anderson finished high school in 1965. He made good grades and scored well on the Scholastic Aptitude Test, winning several college scholarships, according to Say. But he turned them all down.

“He felt he wasn’t mature enough to handle it,” Say said. Instead, Anderson joined the Marines and served six years, including two tours of duty in Vietnam as a combat correspondent, then as reporter, anchorman and station manager for the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service in Japan.

In Tokyo, Anderson met Mihoko, a Japanese woman whom everyone in his family calls Mickey. They married and had a daughter, Gabrielle, now 15.

Anderson enlisted in the Marines, Say said, “as a hard-charging, small-town Republican and came out six years later somebody quite different”--a well-traveled, open-minded journalist who was ready to see more of the world.

After his discharge as a staff sergeant, Anderson spent three years in Des Moines, Iowa, where he worked as a radio and TV newsman for KRNT and KCCI-TV. In 1974, after graduating from Iowa State University, Anderson joined the AP, working in Detroit, Louisville, Ky., and New York before being sent overseas, first to Tokyo, then Johannesburg.

But he quickly grew uncomfortable with his privileged lifestyle in South Africa--a house, a gardener, a driver, apartheid--and jumped at the chance to go to Beirut in 1982 to cover the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, according to Say.

In 1983, Anderson became AP’s chief Middle East correspondent. He often drove around the devastation that was Beirut while listening to jazz tapes, easily maneuvering around tanks and bomb craters.

Anderson also was known for his willingness to risk personal safety to get a closer look at events. During the Israeli invasion, for instance, he drove to West Beirut’s Barbir Hospital under heavy shelling to check a report that several people had been wounded by Israeli phosphorus shells. He saw several scorched children, one of whom died before his eyes. The reporter burst into tears and banged his head against the wall.

In 1984, wife Mickey and daughter Gabrielle left Beirut for good after a particularly nasty shelling episode, and went to live with her parents in Iwakuni, Japan. Soon the couple started divorce proceedings and Anderson began a relationship with Bassil, a Maronite Christian. In the only letter that Say has received from him, Anderson said of his private life: “I’ve left a mess.”

As life in Beirut continued to deteriorate, Say telephoned Anderson, urging: “It’s time to get out of there. Something’s going to happen to you.”

Anderson replied: “You don’t understand. They don’t kidnap journalists. It would be counterproductive. These people need me; I tell their story to the world. That’s my job and they know it.”

A week later, he was taken hostage, becoming a part of the story he was covering.

Terry Anderson

Kidnapped: March 16, 1985

Released: Dec. 4, 1991

Born: Oct. 27, 1947, in Lorain, Ohio

Abducted: March 16, 1985, on a Beirut street after a tennis game

Family: Peggy Say, one of Anderson’s sisters, has become the principal spokesperson for the families of U.S. hostages. Father, Glenn, and a brother, Glenn Jr., both died of cancer in 1986.

Occupation: Chief Middle East correspondent, Associated Press

Career: Graduated from Iowa State University; Marine combat correspondent in Vietnam. Covered Far East and South Africa for AP before first Beirut assignment, reporting on 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Returned to Beirut in early 1983 as news editor and later chief correspondent.