BY SUSAN VELA
The Cincinnati Enquirer
COVINGTON -- Terry Anderson, the former Middle East correspondent who was held hostage 71 months in Lebanon, remembers a day when he arrived at a friend's house to play tennis.
It was 1985 in Lebanon, and he hadn't thought twice about appearing in broad daylight the day after four men in a Mercedes drove up to his car on a West Beirut street and began to pursue him.
Mr. Anderson now rues that he didn't realize the significance of that chase and cancel the visit to his friend's home. It was soon after his arrival that the car reappeared -- but this time, the men inside had guns and they were determined to take Mr. Anderson hostage.
"I didn't have to make it so easy," said Mr. Anderson, speaking Saturday at the Metropolitan Club for an audience of about 20 local journalists and the public.
Mr. Anderson, 50, is a Lorraine, Ohio, native who joined the Marine Corps at 17. While in the service, he was a correspondent from Vietnam. He has been a journalist ever since and was a Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press when Hezbollah, a Shiite Muslim extremist group, took him captive.
Since his release in 1991, Mr. Anderson has written a book about his ordeal, helped produce a CNN documentary about Lebanon and joined the journalism faculty at Ohio University in Athens.
At Saturday's two-hour presentation, Mr. Anderson focused on his years as a hostage and his passion for journalism. He detailed only his first 24 days in captivity, up until the time he asked a guard for a Bible.
"I'm not an animal; I'm a man," Mr. Anderson recalled telling the guard. The next day, a guard threw a new Bible at him.
Mr. Anderson remembered that the guards allowed him to sit up to read but threw a blanket over his head so that they wouldn't see him. Six years later, he told the audience, the Bible was tattered -- but he was walking away as a free man.
"It was not fun," he said. "It was bad. Mostly, it was boring."
When talking about his years in captivity, Mr. Anderson spoke slowly and often paused between sentences. But he also shared the humor that he and fellow hostages found to help them get through their years in captivity.
Mr. Anderson remembered how one of his fellow hostages joked that they had shared more time together than the man had been able to spend with his wife.
"He said I was not as fun."
Keeping his mind active saved him. One of his fellow hostages was the dean of agriculture at American University in Washington, D.C.
The professor taught Mr. Anderson economics and statistics. Mr. Anderson said he also learned French -- because he had "all this time for irregular verbs."
Mr. Anderson said there was a long transition period after his release. He got to know his wife again. She had given birth to a daughter soon after his capture, which meant Mr. Anderson did not meet his child until she was 6 years old.
He saw a psychiatrist for a while and also left journalism.
"I departed from the faith," he said.
But he returned to the profession and also returned to Lebanon. There, he met with senior members of Hezbollah and realized he had been successful in getting rid of his anger.
"I'm not angry, but I don't love them," said Mr. Anderson, before passing a hand over the back of his head. "That's a bald spot, not a halo."
Mr. Anderson is teaching a writing class this semester and, for the next, he will teach a course on foreign correspondence. He likes that his students would rather learn about journalism than listen to one of his war stories. Some of his students have graduated to report from Malaysia, Bosnia and other countries.
As a teacher, Mr. Anderson said he stresses the need to be fair and accurate and the importance of a free press.
"It is not just a job. It is not just a business," said Mr. Anderson, before sharing something he often tells his students. "If you don't care about doing this job with passion, go some place else."
