Journalist was held hostage in Lebanon for nearly seven years

He found some consolation in the Bible, though, and added: “The only real defence was to remember that no one could take away my self-respect and dignity — only I could do that.”

Terry Alan Anderson was born on October 27, 1947, in Lorain, Ohio, where his father, Glen, was the village police officer. When he was still young, the family moved to Batavia in western New York, where his father drove a truck and his mother, Lily (Lunn) Anderson, was a waitress.

After graduating from high school he was accepted by the University of Michigan and offered a scholarship, but decided to join the Marines instead. He served for five years in Japan, Okinawa and Vietnam as a combat journalist and a final year in Iowa as a recruiter.

After he was discharged, he earned degrees in journalism and political science from Iowa State University, while working for a local television station. He worked for The Associated Press in Japan and South Africa, before beginning a two-and-a-half-year stint in Lebanon in 1983.

After his release he owned a blues bar in Athens, Ohio, and ran unsuccessfully as a Democrat for the Ohio State Senate in 2004. He sued Iran for $100 million in damages in a federal court and eventually collected about $26 million from that nation’s assets that had been frozen in the United States. His windfall lasted about seven years; he filed for bankruptcy in 2009.

Anderson established a foundation, the Vietnam Children’s Fund, with a friend, Marcia Landau, which built more than 50 schools in Vietnam. He was the honorary chairman of the Committee to Protect Journalists.

He also taught at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University, the University of Kentucky and the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.

In addition to his daughter Sulome, he is survived by his second of three wives, Madeleine Bassil, whom he married in 1982; another daughter, Gabrielle Anderson; a sister, Judy Anderson; and a brother, Jack Anderson.

As much as captivity was an ordeal, Anderson recalled, so was acclimating to what he called “the real world.”

“I had problems and it took me a long time to begin to cope with them,” he said. “People ask me, ‘Did you get over them?’ I don’t know! Ask my ex-wife — ask my third ex-wife. I don’t know; I am who I am. I was damaged a great deal more than I was aware of — than anyone was aware of,” he said. “It takes as long to recover as the time you spent in prison,” he added.

The New York Times