Emotional homecoming, lessons learned
There was not enough room for everyone to fit inside the
10,000-capacity Moby Arena on Sunday, Dec. 1, 1991.
Another 10,000 people stood on the Moby lawn. Thousands of
people lined up along the 12 miles of Interstate 25 between the
Fort Collins-Loveland Airport and the CSU campus and jammed the
sidewalks of South College Avenue.
Others even flew in on parachutes waving American flags.
Whatever their location, they were all present for the same
reason.
They stood to welcome Thomas Sutherland, an American hero, home
to Fort Collins after six and a half years as a hostage in
Lebanon.
“The headlines said ‘He’s the same old Tom’ and it was true,”
said Jean Sutherland, Thomas’ wife. “People didn’t know what to
expect, but he was the same guy even after all of that.”
Tom Sutherland’s 2,354 days in captivity brought strangers in
the Fort Collins community together.
“I remember coming home late one night and hopping in bed to
read the paper,” said community member Bill West. “I read about the
hostage situation and I remember thinking that June 9 would be
Tom’s first anniversary in captivity and that someone really needs
to do something about that. Then I got a feeling that I had never
had before or experienced since and I said ‘it’s going to be
me.'”
West had never met Sutherland, but he joined forces with Frank
Vattano, a friend of Sutherland’s, to make sure that Sutherland was
not forgotten while he was in captivity.
“We wanted to make sure that people didn’t forget Tom
Sutherland,” Vattano said. “We had events after the first 100 days,
the first year and the first 1,000 days; anytime that was a
reasonable time to do something, we did it.”
While commemorating the milestones of Sutherland’s captivity for
six and a half years, Vattano never doubted that Sutherland would
return to Fort Collins.
“I always had hope. Tom is tenacious and if anyone could survive
such a situation, he could,” Vattano said. “He came out and I swear
it was like he was never in captivity.”
Still, few people are thrown so abruptly into a completely new
culture, and Sutherland said his experience made him appreciate
cultural diversity.
“It made me appreciate the United States in general,” Sutherland
said. “We are far from being perfect by a long way, but it is
better than all the rest. But, that doesn’t mean that all of these
other countries don’t have something to offer.”
William Griswold, a friend of Sutherland’s, said that although
Sutherland had always been a compassionate person, he was most
impressed by Sutherland’s nurturing words after his release from
captivity.
“I thought he would be a cooked, cold vegetable when he got
back,” Griswold said. “Then, he made the astounding statement, so
typical of Tom: ‘Why should I hate them? They have to stay in that
awful place, and here I am home in the greatest, most free, most
exciting country in the world.'”
Sutherland said he put things in perspective while in captivity
to maintain his positive attitude.
“I discovered a long time ago that hatred is really a very
divisive force that will really eat you up – so I decided before I
even got out of there that I wasn’t going to spend the rest of my
life being angry and bitter about all that because you can’t do
anything about it – it’s all in the past – if you’re still angry
about it … then you are still a captive, you haven’t gotten free
from it.”
West believes that Sutherland’s optimistic attitude is just one
of the lasting impressions he will leave on the world and the Fort
Collins community.
“There is a lot to be learned from the Tom Sutherland story,”
West said. “Children will always read about the situation in the
history books of Fort Collins and it is also a lesson of the
importance of freedom, especially when you don’t have it, because
this story gives rise to everything that’s been paid to get
it.”
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