Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 23, 1990 TAG: 9004230076
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The families of the three members of the Beirut University College faculty that have been held hostage for three years and three months had been waiting and guessing which one would be released.
The hopes of Jesse Turner's mother, Estelle Ronneburg of Boise, Idaho, were raised last week when her son's captors released a photograph of him along with word an American was about to be freed.
The next day, word the promised release had been postponed was accompanied by a photo of a different hostage, Robert Polhill. To some it was a sign Polhill might be the one.
The waiting and hoping ended Sunday when Polhill was set free.
"It can't help but hurt a little bit because I had high hopes," said Ronneburg, 69, a bookkeeper at a bank in Idaho.
"But I am very happy for Mrs. Polhill. I know how she feels. She's getting her son back."
Ronneburg said she hoped Polhill eventually would have information about her son.
"They've been kept together for so long," she said. "He can answer some of my questions."
Polhill's mother, Ruth, had been waiting for word all weekend in her apartment in Fishkill, N.Y.
When the time came, there was one of those awful-but-true glitches: Telephone problems apparently kept the State Department from getting through to confirm her son had been freed.
Finally, the State Department called Polhill's former wife, Joanne, in Queens, and she called Polhill's mother.
"It's a very emotional moment," Ruth Polhill said. "I'm very, very happy."
She said she regretted that all three hostages had not been freed, adding she had become friends with their relatives as the ordeal had dragged on.
She also said she had decided not to go to Germany to meet her son.
"I will wait until I get to Washington," she said, "and maybe I'll have more control of myself there."
Relatives of the third faculty hostage, Alann Steen, said their hopes had been buoyed though he remains a hostage.
"As long as someone was released, that opens the gates," said Steen's brother, Bruce, a mental-health counselor. "I think it's going to happen. I think it's in the works."
He speculated Polhill had been chosen for release because he was said to be in the poorest health.
Sunday was Alann Steen's 51st birthday, but his brother said he had not looked for significance in that coincidence.
Once before, on Oct. 3, 1988, Bruce Steen had high hopes for his brother's release. But an Indian citizen, Mithileshwar Singh, was freed instead.
This time, Steen said, he was calmer, jogging on the beach at Santa Cruz, Calif., Sunday morning and making a lunch date with a friend.
"The law of averages will set in after awhile," Steen said. "It was one in four. Now it's one in two. Maybe they'll let them go one at a time, every 24 or 48 hours."
by CNB