Sweet Land of Liberty

By Richard Stengel

With flight bags looped over their shoulders, packages from duty-free shops clutched under their arms and broad smiles across their faces, they could have been a group of tourists happily returning from a slightly wearying holiday. But the 30 men descending the red-carpeted steps of the TWA jet at Andrews Air Force Base last Tuesday were among the 39 hostages whose personal ordeal at the hands of radical Lebanese Shi'ites had been an agonizing 17-day national nightmare. Now they were home. As they walked into the bright sunlight, they seemed to give fresh affirmation to the familiar Fourth of July lyrics about the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Shortly after the plane taxied down the runway, Ronald and Nancy Reagan went aboard for a private word with the passengers. Captain John Testrake, with a mixture of down-home heartiness and wry understatement, told the President, "Let me take you back here. I want you to meet some good friends of mine." When Reagan entered the cabin, the wife of one of the hostages put down the Bible she had been reading and stood up and applauded. Seven minutes later, the Reagans emerged and waited for the passengers.

One by one they descended, some of them practically skipping down the steps. No one actually kissed the ground, but Blake Synnestvedt of Bryn Athyn, Pa., knelt down and patted the tarmac. Peter Hill raised both hands over his head, as if he had won a championship fight.

As they passed through what was a simple reception line, the passengers shook hands with the President, a few patted him on the back, others embraced the First Lady. Some shyly or proudly introduced their wives and children. But all seemed eager to move on, eager to hug those waiting for them a few yards away, eager to get home and out from under the glare of being the unwilling heroes of a televised international crisis. After embracing Nancy, an ebullient Victor Amburgy of San Francisco rushed over, picked up his small niece and bear-hugged the beaming girl. He seemed to want to press all the air out of her.

The ceremony was muted, a mixture of joy, relief and sadness. "I'll wait for a second until I swallow the lump in my throat," Reagan told the ex-hostages and 400 onlookers. "This isn't a time for speeches; it is a time for reunions and families coming together. There's only one thing to say, and I say it from the bottom of my heart in the name of all the people of our country: Welcome home."

The subdued celebration lacked the cathartic fanfare that accompanied the arrival four years ago of the 52 hostages who had been held for 444 days in Iran. One reason was the memory of the American who had come home earlier, Navy Diver Robert Stethem, slain by the original hijackers of TWA Flight 847. "Our joy at your return is substantial," Reagan told the crowd. "But so is our pain at what was done to that one son of America." Shortly before going to Andrews Air Force Base, the President had stopped at Arlington National Cemetery and visited Stethem's freshly sodded grave. Only that morning, Stethem's grave had been a bare plot marked by a green metal stake; cemetery officials hurried to get a Vermont marble headstone inscribed for the visit. Mrs. Reagan set a bouquet of white roses and carnations at the stone, then wiped away tears with a handkerchief.

Reagan's quiet words also underlined the plight of the "forgotten seven" hostages, those Americans randomly kidnaped in Beirut during the past 15 months and still held captive. The President seemed determined to set a tone of restraint, not chauvinism. "Even the band was unobtrusive," said one Reagan aide. Still, the White House had recruited a handful of Capitol Hill interns to pass out tiny flags and neatly hand-painted signs to the crowd. Most read WELCOME HOME, but a few were not so neutral. THANKS RON said one, and a banner read THANK YOU MR. PRESIDENT.

Like the bashful hero of a '30s movie, Captain Testrake humbly gave thanks to anyone and everyone who had kept the hostages in thoughts and prayers. When he finished, there was an awkward moment, as though no one was quite sure what came next. Reagan spontaneously filled in the missing lines. He leaned over to the microphone and said, with a smile and a note of gentle exhortation, "Go home!"

In captivity, the hostages had been restrained in their comments to the ubiquitous TV cameras about their feelings toward the Amal militiamen holding them. Once freed, however, many of them began to vent their anger and bitterness, as well as resentment that their captors had been depicted as anything other than brutish fanatics. Some of the hostages distinguished between the original gunmen who hijacked the plane, thought to be from the fanatic Shi'ite Hizballah (Party of God), and the Amal militiamen who took control after the first two days. "Once the Amal came aboard, things seemed to settle down some," said Testrake. Yet others were hostile toward both groups. "The Amal portrayed themselves as our protectors and our saviors," said Hill, a travel-agency manager from Hoffman Estates, Ill. "That's absolute nonsense. They were our captors."

The fact that Testrake acted as the spokesman reflected the shift in attitude. On the plane from Wiesbaden, West Germany, Allyn Conwell, who had resigned as the group's spokesman, asked Testrake to replace him. A cool, articulate, square-jawed Texan, Conwell had alienated some by expressing "genuine sympathy" for the captors and equating the hostage taking with Israel's detention of hundreds of Shi'ites. Hill, for one, declared that Conwell had been "sucked in." Said an outraged Hill: "I asked him if he was going to carry the Koran and Islamic prayer beads with him to the White House."

On his way to Houston, a seemingly tireless Conwell, an oil-equipment salesman who now resides in Oman, said he had belatedly discovered that he was being criticized for his apparently pro-Shi'ite remarks. He noted reports that the White House had preferred that he not speak at Andrews base and that the President's men were relieved when Captain Testrake was asked to become the new spokesman. Once the hostages were freed, Conwell agreed, it made sense to have the captain act as spokesman.

At a press conference in Houston on Thursday, after he had spent time reviewing videotapes of his remarks during the ordeal, Conwell remained proud and unruffled. "I am not a co-conspirator," he said. "It really astounds me that anyone would think that." He emphasized that he made a distinction between the original hijackers and the Amal militiamen. "When I talk about sympathy," Conwell said, "I would only refer to the latter group, the Amal, certainly not the thieves or the murderers or the barbarians." He had no sympathy, either, for Hill, pointing out that Hill had not raised any objections to his statements while they were in Beirut. "I would recommend that Mr. Hill seek psychiatric help, but I'm not going to sue him."

Celebration, not controversy, accompanied the other freed hostages on their trips home for the Fourth of July. For most, the timing could not have been better: celebrating their own independence along with that of the nation seemed to heighten the meaning of both. Robert Peel Jr. of Hutchinson, Kans., spoke what was on everyone's mind: "Independence Day has a whole new meaning."

When they reached their hometowns, a new color seemed to have been added to the traditional red-white-and-blue palette of July Fourth: yellow. Everywhere they went, they were surrounded by the color that has come to symbolize concern for hostages. Yellow ribbons hanging from their homes and lining the roads nearby. Yellow balloons released into the sky. Yellow T shirts with their names emblazoned on them. Yellow banners. Yellow roses. Yellow bows around bottles of champagne.

For many of the hostages, the color also symbolized the continuing captivity of the seven men who had not returned, men whom they never knew but whose plight they understood. It was as though before the 39 had separated, they had made a pact not to forget, and not to let others forget, the "forgotten seven." When Jerome Barczak arrived at his son's home in Memphis, he took a pair of scissors and cut down the slightly frayed yellow ribbon from the lamppost and then tied a fresh one. "This one," he said, "is for the seven Americans who are still held hostage in Lebanon."

Some of the freed hostages spent Independence Day in the same media spotlight that had enveloped them for the past few weeks. For them, reporters and cameramen were like some extended family that never left their side. On a hazy July Fourth afternoon, George Lazansky, a vice president of the Algonquin, Ill., State Bank, whose Chicago Cubs cap had been expropriated by the hijackers, lived out one of his private fantasies in public. At Wrigley Field, he led Cubs fans in the Pledge of Allegiance, adding a promise not to forget the seven still held in Beirut. Then he slowly walked to the mound and threw out the first ball.

Earlier that morning, the Rev. Thomas Dempsey stood before his parishioners in a park across the street from St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Church in St. Charles, Ill., and celebrated his first Mass since his return. "I would like to make the greatest understatement of my life," said the smiling priest, "when I say to you, I'm happy to be with you. It is fitting that we are meeting on July Fourth to celebrate the most precious gift we have, the priceless gift of freedom." All the while John Testrake was being driven home to Richmond, Mo., in his red Oldsmobile, he had something on his mind. He passed through small towns that had hundreds of yellow ribbons decorating telephone booths, mailboxes and trees. When he reached Richmond, he was greeted by 3,000 friends and neighbors. He hardly knew what to say, but he did know what he wanted. "First," he announced, "I've got to see Mae and get a haircut." Mae Hammond, a widow who runs a barbershop on the corner of the town square, assented. Testrake, she said of the man who comes to her every two weeks for a trim, was "looking a little shaggy."

The five surviving Navy divers of the underwater construction team whose sixth member had been Robbie Stethem decided to spend the holiday the same way they had spent the past few weeks: together. The intensive training and small size of their unit makes for ready camaraderie, but Stethem's murder had brought them even closer. With their wives, they went on a secluded picnic in Norfolk, Va., not far from the base where all had trained.

For the freed hostages -- ordinary men caught in extraordinary circumstances -- it was the commonplace aspects of daily life that really brought home their sense of freedom. Barczak, through tears, told reporters, "For me, freedom is just being able to do the everyday, ordinary things that you can do in America." Benjamin Zimmermann, the flight engineer aboard the hijacked TWA airliner, simply wanted to be alone with a few friends and relatives. When he arrived in his hometown of Cascade, Idaho, he told a welcoming crowd of more than 1,000, "TWA Flight 847 has finally landed."

With reporting by Lee Griggs/Richmond and Alessandra Stanley/Washington, with other bureaus