Remembering Terry Anderson, AP hostage survivor
Atime in living memory happened when media we consumed was not a matter of deep political division, and Terry Anderson of the Associated Press was one of the most honorable examples of such a time.
A Marine Corps combat veteran of the Vietnam War, Anderson was serving as AP Chief Middle East Correspondent when he was abducted by Hezbollah terrorists in Beirut in April 1985.
Turned out I had just been hired by AP’s Los Angeles Bureau Chief John Brewer within weeks of Terry Anderson’s kidnapping. Terry’s daughter, Sulome, and my son, Garrett, were born within weeks of each other. Though not related, we were tied by two kinship families, military veterans and frontline journalism.
Anderson and Brewer died this past week, and it leaves a hole in my heart for what it was all of us tried to do, to report news without fear or favor, and report stories of the world that needed telling.
Anderson was held, often chained, in Beirut terrorist dungeons for more than seven years. Bureau Chief Brewer had a sign in the LA bureau with words to the effect, “Have you thought about Terry Anderson today?”
Anderson was the last of eight American hostages to be released, their captivity triggered the mostly forgotten but notorious “Iran Contra Affair,” the Lt. Col. Oliver North rogue White House operation to trade arms for hostages. It was a fiasco that caused greater troubles for President Ronald Reagan’s White House.
In the AP bureau, my Navy vet brother Jeff Wilson, and a couple of us held Terry’s memory close, sending boxes of Christmas stuff to his little girl Sulome was growing up. She was 7 when he was released in 1992 and had never met him.
Sulome grew up to be a first-rate journalist, her story told in her fine book “The Hostage’s Daughter.” My little boy grew up to be a combat Marine, like Terry, serving in Fallujah, and he also is an excellent writer and storyteller.
A couple of years after Terry’s release, I brought Antelope Valley college students to a Journalism Association of Community College conference in Fresno where Terry Anderson spoke about his ordeal recounted in his own book, “Den of Lions.”
On National Public Radio this morning I heard his daughter in a 2016 interview say that Terry suppressed his own post trauma stress disorder from captivity until years later when she began working on her book about the family tragedy and dysfunction after his release.
Sulome and Terry’s books, written from separate perspectives, recounted the vindictiveness, and pointless venality of the kidnappers and their failure to understand even their own goals, other than to somehow try to punish “The Great Satan,” meaning, us, and profit from their malice.
On our conference night, after the student talk, Terry just wanted to go for a quiet beer. At the table, we were joined by AP alumni brother Steve LeVine, recovering from wounds sustained in Chechnya reporting for The New York Times. We were also visited by Mark Arax of the Los Angeles Times, and there was me, the other Anderson from AP.
We talked about war, conflict reporting and hazards of service. AVC students Bart Weitzel, who joined the Navy after 9/11, and Gulf War veteran Greg Botonis were with us. We were all survivors of a certain kind.
John Brewer, consummate AP journalist, died Friday in a boating accident during a Montana fishing trip. He was 76 and aged better than Ernest Hemingway, that other Montana fisherman who reported about war and told real stories. Terry Anderson of AP died Sunday, complications from heart surgery, also 76.
These newsmen were giants of telling the story, and telling it true. We needed as many of them as we could get, and only need more of their kind right now.
Dennis Anderson is a licensed clinical social worker at High Desert Medical Group. An Army paratrooper veteran who covered the Iraq War for the Antelope Valley Press, he serves as Supervisor Kathryn Barger’s appointee on the Los Angeles County Veterans Advisory Commission.