AP executive played key role in winning freedom for Terry Anderson
NEW YORK — Larry Heinzerling, a 41year Associated Press news executive and bureau chief who played a key role in winning freedom for hostage Terry Anderson from his Hezbollah abductors in Lebanon, has died after a short illness. He was 75.
Mr. Heinzerling, who passed away at home in New York on Wednesday night, served as AP bureau chief in South Africa during a time of popular revolt against apartheid and in West Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall. He was deputized by then-AP President and Chief Executive Officer Lou Boccardi to seek contacts with governments and international intermediaries to obtain the release of Anderson, the AP bureau chief in Beirut who had been kidnapped by the extremist group in 1985.
He worked behind the scenes for nearly seven years to win Anderson’s release in 1991.
At AP headquarters in New York, Mr. Heinzerling was director of AP World Services and later deputy international editor. He was the son of the late Lynn Heinzerling, a Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent for the AP in Europe and Africa.
“Larry followed in the footsteps of his illustrious AP correspondent father but he walked his own widely admired path — reporter, editor, bureau chief, headquarters executive and, in one painful period in AP history, my personal envoy as we searched across the world for the key to freedom for Terry Anderson,” Boccardi said in an email Thursday.
“Larry epitomized the enduring values of honor, trust, grace under pressure and talent. He was a joy to have in the AP family.”
Mr. Heinzerling grew up partly in Elyria, Ohio, and partly overseas in Johannesburg, Geneva and London among other cities where his father was posted. His father was a World War II correspondent for AP and won his Pulitzer in 1961 for coverage of the 1960 Congo crisis as the country emerged from Belgian colonial rule.
Mr. Heinzerling graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University before joining the AP in Columbus in 1967, simultaneously acquiring a master’s degree in international journalism at Ohio State.