Terry Anderson, the AP reporter kidnapped in Lebanon and held captive for years, has died at age 76

Terry Anderson, the Associated Press correspondent who became one of America's longest-held hostages after he was snatched off the street in war-torn Lebanon in 1985 and held for nearly seven years, has died at age 76.

Anderson, who described his kidnapping and torturous imprisonment by Islamic militants in his 1993 best-selling novel "Den of Lions", died Sunday at his home in Greenwood Lake, N.Y., his daughter Sulome Anderson said.

According to his daughter, Anderson died of complications from recent heart surgery.

"Terry was deeply committed to eyewitness reporting from the field and showed tremendous courage and determination both in his journalistic work and during his years as a hostage. We greatly appreciate the sacrifices he and his family have made as a result of his work", said Julie Pace, AP senior vice president and executive editor.

"He never liked being called a hero, but everyone persisted in calling him just that", Sulome Anderson said. "I saw him a week ago, and my partner asked him if he had anything on his wish list that he wanted to do. He replied, 'I've lived so much and done so much. I'm content".

Since returning to the United States in 1991, Anderson has led an erratic life, giving public speeches, teaching journalism at several prominent universities, and at various times running a blues bar, a Cajun restaurant, a horse ranch, and a gourmet restaurant.

He also struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder, won millions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets after a federal court ruled that country played a role in his capture, and then lost much of that money through failed investments. He filed for bankruptcy in 2009.

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

"I live in the countryside, it's pretty good weather, it's quiet and peaceful and the place is nice, so I'm doing OK", he said with a chuckle in a 2018 interview with The Associated Press.

In 1985, Anderson was one of several Westerners kidnapped by members of the Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah during the war that plunged Lebanon into chaos.

After his release, he returned to AP's New York headquarters where he was greeted as a hero.

Louis D. Boccardi, AP's president and chief executive at the time, recalled Sunday that Anderson's fate was not out of the minds of his AP colleagues.

"The word 'hero' is often used, but as applied to Terry Anderson, it only reinforces its meaning", Boccardi said. "His six-and-a-half year ordeal as a terrorist hostage was as unimaginable as it was real - the chains, the transportation from hideout to hideout, the tethering to the undercarriage of a truck, the often inedible food, the cut-off from the world he recounted with such skill and care".

As AP's chief Middle East correspondent, Anderson spent several years reporting on the growing violence in Lebanon, where the country was at war with Israel and Iran was funding militant groups trying to overthrow its government.

On March 16, 1985, a day off, he took a break to play tennis with former AP photographer Don Mell and was driving Mell to his home when kidnappers armed with handguns dragged him from the car.

He said he was targeted because he was one of the few Westerners still in Lebanon and because his role as a journalist raised suspicions among Hezbollah members.

"Because they think people who go around asking questions in uncomfortable and dangerous places must be spies", he told Virginia newspaper The Review of Orange County in 2018.

Then followed nearly seven years of brutality, during which he was beaten, chained to a wall, threatened with death, often had a gun to his head and was held in solitary confinement for long periods of time.

Anderson was the longest held among several Western hostages Hezbollah has kidnapped over the years, including Terry Waite, a former envoy of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who arrived to try to negotiate Anderson's release.

According to Anderson and other hostages, he was the most hostile captive, 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 in private.

During his long ordeal, he managed to retain a quick mind and a keen sense of humor. On his last day in Beirut, he called the leader of the kidnappers to inform him that he had just heard an erroneous radio report that he had been released and was in Syria.

I said: "Mahmund, listen, I'm not here. I'm gone, little ones. I'm on my way to Damascus.' And we both laughed", he told Giovanna Dell'Orto, author of "AP Foreign Correspondents in Action: World War II to the Present".

He later learned that his release was delayed because the third party to whom the kidnappers planned to hand him over had gone on a date with his mistress and they had to find someone else.

Mell, who was in the car at the time of the kidnapping, said Sunday that he and Anderson shared an unusual bond.

"Our relationship was much broader and deeper, more important and meaningful than that single incident", Mell says.

Mell believed that Anderson had launched his journalism career and succeeded in getting the young photographer a full-time job at the AP. After Anderson's release, their friendship grew even stronger. They were best men at each other's weddings and socialized frequently.

Anderson's humor often masked the post-traumatic stress disorder he admittedly suffered from for years afterward.

"AP brought in a couple of British hostage decompression experts, clinical psychiatrists, to advise me and my wife, and they were very helpful", he said in 2018. "But one of my problems was that I didn't realize enough of the damage that had been done.

When people ask me, "Are you over it?". Well, I don't know. No, not really. It's there. I don't think about it a lot lately, it's not the main thing in my life. But it's there", he said.

Anderson said his faith as a Christian helped him let go of his anger. And what his wife later told him also helped him move on: "If you keep hate, you can't have joy.

At the time of the kidnapping, Anderson was engaged 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 were estranged for many years.

"I love my daddy very much. My dad has always loved me. I just didn't know it because he couldn't show it to me", Sulome Anderson told the AP in a 2017 interview.

Father and daughter reconciled after the 2017 publication of the critically acclaimed book "The Hostage's Daughter", in which she described traveling to Lebanon to confront one of her father's kidnappers and eventually forgiving him.

"I think she's done some extraordinary things, has had a very difficult journey in her personal life, but has also done some very important journalistic work", Anderson said. "She's a better journalist now than I've ever been".

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

After graduation, he turned down a scholarship to the University of Michigan and enlisted in the Marine Corps, where he rose to the rank of Staff Sergeant, serving in combat during the Vietnam War.

After returning home, he enrolled at the University of Iowa, graduating with a double major in journalism and political science, and shortly thereafter joined the AP. He reported from Kentucky, Japan, and South Africa before arriving in Lebanon in 1982 just as the country was descending into chaos.

"It was actually the most exciting job of my life", he told The Review. "It was intense. There was a war going on - it was very dangerous in Beirut. A brutal civil war, and I lasted about three years before I was kidnapped".

Anderson was married and divorced three times. In addition to his daughter, he is survived by another daughter, Gabrielle Anderson, from his first marriage; a sister, Judy Anderson; and a brother, Jack Anderson.

"I know he would prefer to be remembered not for his most horrific experience, but for his humanitarian work with the Vietnam Children's Fund, the Committee to Protect Journalists, homeless veterans and many other incredible causes", Sulome Anderson said in a statement released Sunday.

No funeral arrangements have been made yet, she said.