Los Angeles, California——

Terry Anderson, a globe-trotting AP journalist who was kidnapped from the streets of war-torn Lebanon in 1985 and held captive for nearly seven years, becoming one of the longest-held hostages in the United States, has been Died at the age of 76.

Anderson died Sunday at his home in Greenwood Lake, New York, said his daughter, Sulome Anderson. Anderson chronicled his experience of being kidnapped and tortured by Islamist militants in his 1993 best-selling memoir, “The Lion’s Den.”

The cause of death was unknown, but his daughter said Anderson had recently undergone heart surgery.

“He never liked being called a hero, but everyone insisted on calling him that,” Sulom Anderson said. “I met him a week ago and my partner asked him if there was anything on his wish list or anything he wanted to do. He said, ‘I’ve lived so much, I’ve done so much. I content. ‘”

After returning to the United States in 1991, Anderson lived a free life, giving public lectures, teaching journalism at several prestigious universities, and at various times running a blues bar, Cajun restaurant, horse ranch, and gourmet restaurant.

He also struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder and won millions of dollars from assets frozen in Iran, then lost them through bad investments, after a federal court concluded the state played a role in his arrest. most of the assets. He filed for bankruptcy in 2009.

After retiring from the University of Florida in 2015, Anderson settled on a small horse ranch in a quiet, rural area of ​​northern Virginia that he discovered while camping with friends.

“I live in the country, it’s pretty nice weather, it’s quiet, it’s a nice place, so I’m doing well,” he said with a laugh in a 2018 interview with The Associated Press.

In 1985, as Lebanon was engulfed in chaos during war, he was one of several Westerners kidnapped by members of the Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah.

After his release, he returned to the AP headquarters in New York and received a hero’s welcome.

As AP’s chief Middle East correspondent, Anderson spent years covering escalating violence in Lebanon as the country warred with Israel and Iran funded militant groups seeking to overthrow its government.

Chained to a wall and receiving death threats

On March 16, 1985, on a day off, he took a break to play tennis with former Associated Press photographer Don Mell, who was dropped off at his home by armed kidnappers. Towed out of the car.

He said he was likely to be targeted because he is one of the few Westerners still in Lebanon and because his role as a journalist aroused suspicion among Hezbollah members.

“Because according to them, anyone who goes around asking questions in awkward and dangerous places must be a spy,” he told the Virginian newspaper orange county review 2018.

What followed was nearly seven years of brutality, during which he was beaten, chained to a wall, received death threats, had a gun pointed at his head, and was often placed in solitary confinement.

Anderson is the longest-serving of several Western hostages Hezbollah has kidnapped over the years, including Terry Waite, a former envoy to the Archbishop of Canterbury who came to try to negotiate Anderson’s release.

According to him and other hostages, he was also the most hostile prisoner, constantly demanding better food and treatment, arguing with his captors about religion and politics, and teaching other hostages sign language and where to hide messages so they could communicate privately.

Throughout his long ordeal, he managed to retain his wit and sharp sense of humor. On his last day in Beirut, he called the leader of his kidnappers into his room and told him he had just heard a false radio report that he had been freed and was in Syria.

“I said, ‘Mahmoud, listen, I’m not here. I’m leaving, babies. I’m on my way to Damascus.’ We all laughed,” he told AP Foreign Correspondents in Action: Second Giovanna Dell’Alto, author of “World War I to the Present”.

He later learns that the kidnappers planned to leave the third party he was handed over to have a tryst with the party’s mistress, so his release was delayed and they had to find someone else.

Trauma lasts for years

Anderson’s humor often masked the post-traumatic stress disorder he admitted years later.

“The AP brought in several British hostage stress reduction experts and clinical psychiatrists to consult with my wife and I, and they were very helpful,” he said in 2018. “But one of the problems I encountered was I didn’t fully realize the damage that had been done.

“So when people ask me, you know, ‘Are you over it?’ Well, I don’t know, I don’t think about it that much now, it’s not the center of my life.”

Anderson was engaged when he was abducted, and his future wife was six months pregnant with their daughter, Sulome.

The couple married shortly after his release but divorced a few years later, and although they remained on friendly terms, Anderson and his daughter had been estranged for years.

“I love my dad very much. My dad has always loved me. I just didn’t know that because he couldn’t show me that,” Sulom Anderson told The Associated Press in 2017.

Father and daughter reconciled in 2017 following the release of her critically acclaimed book, The Hostage’s Daughter. In the book, she tells the story of traveling to Lebanon to confront and ultimately forgive one of her father’s kidnappers.

“I think she did something extraordinary and went through a very difficult personal journey but also accomplished a very important career in journalism,” Anderson said. “She’s now a better reporter than I am. “

Choose the Marine Corps over Michigan State

Terry Alan Anderson was born on October 27, 1947. He spent his childhood in the Lake Erie town of Vermilion, Ohio, where his father was a police officer.

After high school, he turned down a scholarship to the University of Michigan to join the Marine Corps, where he saw combat during the Vietnam War and rose to the rank of staff sergeant.

After returning home, he enrolled at Iowa State University, earning a double major in journalism and political science, and soon joined the Associated Press. He reported from Kentucky, Japan and South Africa before arriving in Lebanon in 1982, just as the country was in chaos.

“In fact, it’s the most fascinating job I’ve ever done in my life,” he told the outlet. Orange County Review. “It was very intense. There was a war going on – Beirut was very dangerous. A brutal civil war and I lasted about three years before I was kidnapped.”

Anderson was married three times and divorced three times. In addition to his daughter, he leaves behind another daughter from his first marriage, Gabrielle Anderson.