For one man, the march to freedom was a long and lengthy process.

Thomas Hargrove, the ISU alumnus who was held captive in Colombia by teenage Marxist guerrillas for nearly a year, has been a free man since August 22, 1995.

Hargrove came back to his Alma Mater and was honored as the grand marshal and keynote speaker of Veishea 1996 the weekend of April 19-21.

He received his master’s degree in agriculture journalism in 1968 and his Ph.D. in agriculture education.

I was his student host during his visit to ISU. It was a remarkable experience — one I will never forget.

Hargrove is over 6-feet tall, with graying hair and moustache and a strong looking face. When you look at him you wouldn’t think that he spent his time 9,000 feet in the Andes Mountains, for nearly a year of hell, and it’s hard to imagine that when he came out of captivity his 185-pound frame was a mere 125 pounds, and his hair was bright orange from malnutrition.

Meeting Hargrove

When I picked him up at the airport, finding things to talk about with Hargrove was not a problem. He talked of many things, and his stories were always interesting.

Reading his book, Long March to Freedom, before I met him wasn’t as real to me as it was when I became acquainted with the man who lived it.

On the way to Ames he talked about the morning he was captured. He was late for work, and he had two roads he could take to get there. He could either go the boring way or take the scenic route. American author Robert Fulgham once said it is better to take the scenic route. Following his advice, Hargrove took the scenic route, right into the hands of his captures.

Hargrove made me realize that sometimes the paths in life we take are not always the ones we want. It’s obvious that life is sometimes funny that way, and sometimes not funny that way.

Later that evening, I helped him check into his hotel, and he showed me the actual diaries he wrote in when he was held captive. Things were beginning to become more real. I wasn’t just reading a book of someone’s life. This was the actual person who had survived such a miserable year of very cold temperatures, little nutrition and no personal freedom.

The diaries were tattered and the writing was so tiny you could hardly read it. He even showed me the leather belt he had worn, that contained a secret zipper where money could be kept. During his captivity, he kept his two checkbooks inside which he used as part of his diaries.

The story of how he was able to record his diaries in secret is a little bizarre.

There was a young teenage guerrilla, one of the head guerrillas in charge, Hargrove said, named Juaco. He had given Hargrove some notebooks. It just so happened that Juaco went “insane” one night, mainly because of a cow that was killed out of drunken carelessness by another guerrilla.

The guerrillas, Hargrove said, had a habit of getting drunk on brandy and high at night and then they would just shoot off their guns for no reason at all. The cow was killed on one of these nights, and Juaco knew it was a disgraceful thing that happened and he felt responsible.

At one point that night during Juaco’s insanity, he pointed his gun to the back of Hargrove’s head and slowly as the gun slid upward, Juaco shot it off just above him. Later on he pulled the gun on himself and took his own life. Juaco was the only one who knew about the notebooks which later became his diaries, Hargrove said, so he was able to keep them hidden from the others.

Hargrove thought at first that he felt pity for Juaco, but he realizes that without those diaries he doesn’t know what he would have done.

It’s hard to have any concern or pity for these people, he had said.

About the only thing he was able to do to keep from going insane was write in those diaries and build fires at night to try to keep himself comfortable, mentally and physically.

It was hard for Hargrove to think of his family and his home.

Often, he said, he would see dogs wandering around the camps he was held in but couldn’t stand to see them or be near them.

“I love dogs,” he said, but “they reminded me too much of home. . . “

The next day I went to pick him up at his hotel, for Veishea Opening Ceremonies and when I asked him to autograph his book for me, he said “Mucho Gusto” which means “With Pleasure” in Spanish.

To Colleen Mullen: Upon return from the Valley of the Shadow. With gratitude. Tom Hargrove: a free man at Veishea. Iowa State University 19 April 1996.

Honors and Reunions

Later at the ceremony, Hargrove spoke of his experiences.

In opening he said, “Just a few months ago, when I was in prison in chains, I was thinking ‘God, what did I do to deserve this?’ and today [as I stand before you all] I’m wondering, ‘God, what did I do to deserve this?”

After signing his books for people, a reception was held for him by the journalism department in Hamilton Hall. There, many of his old friends and acquaintances awaited his arrival.

I remember when he saw his old friend, Bill Gillette, a journalism professor, when we walked down the hall.

There’s Professor Gillette, Mr. Hargrove,” I said.

“Bill!” Hargrove said. Gillette smiled as they drew near and welcomed each other with a hug.

The next day was the parade. I’ll never forget the look on his face when he saw the red Corvette convertible he would be riding in during the parade. He stood by the car and looked at the sign that read “Grand Marshal, Thomas Hargrove” and couldn’t believe this was all for him.

Later on during the parade he leaned over and quietly said to me, “I wonder what those guerrillas would think about this?”

Hargrove explained that if those guerrillas could see how he was being honored at that moment, his ransom would have been higher for sure. And his time spent in captivity would have probably been much longer.

Being in captivity is a lengthy process, he said, because each detail is so complicated. Hargrove wasn’t released until August 22, 1995, after two ransoms were paid.

Something not contained in the book that Hargrove told me about is a drug lab that was being operated at the third camp in which he was held. If he would have written about it in his diaries, he said, and they found them, he might have easily been killed for sure.

This instance was just one of many during which he didn’t know if they would take his life or not.

The most remarkable part of Hargrove’s visit wasn’t the eyes of interest that focused on him during his speech or the greetings of clapping and the voices yelling out, “Welcome home, Tom” that came from the crowd.

It wasn’t all of his old friends who greeted him with sincere embraces, but rather it was the fact that I was standing by a man who was free and who had shown the strength and courage to survive something so terrifying and dehumanizing.

What became even more clear to me was that just because Hargrove is a free man now, his life has not gone unchanged.

Hargrove said he can never go back to Colombia where he worked with CIAT (International Center for Tropical Agriculture), where he strived to improve the technology of Colombia’s poorest farmers.

Hargrove and his family are back in Texas, and he hopes to eventually continue working with international agriculture.

“I think I’m going to be doing some free lance work” he said, after a few months of recuperation.

Soon, Hargrove and his wife, Susan, will be moving to Galveston in the historical district where a big old-style home awaits their arrival.

Right now, Hargrove said, many of their belongings are stored in two storage spaces which were transferred from their home in Cali. Their current home, he said, in Granbury, isn’t big enough to hold all of them.

At this time it becomes more clear to me that the whole incident has changed Hargrove’s life along with his family’s more than what we could ever imagine.

There’s just more to the story than everyone knows about, he said.

His two college-aged sons, Miles and Getty, took a year off from school when their father was in captivity to help get their father out. His wife, Susan, stayed in Cali, hoping that her husband would someday come home safely.

They were all a part of the captivity, Hargrove said, and feels it was probably harder on them than on himself.

Miles, an electronic media studies major, used a camera to record the ordeal which included witnessing when the ransoms were paid and the operations of the secret service men and other officials who worked on the release of Hargrove.

It wasn’t just Hargrove’s life that was affected, he said, it was “all of ours.”

After a few days of getting acquainted with his Alma Mater again, I took him back to the airport for him to board his plane back to Texas.

I was sad to see my new friend leave, but I was happy to have been able to get to know Hargrove and learn about his experiences and realize how important freedom is.

He handed me a book he wrote that was published after he was taken captive called, A Dragon Lives Forever, which is based on his experiences with the after effects of the Vietnam War.

In it he wrote: “To Colleen Mullen, Hoping that friends started in Ames, like Asian dragons, will live forever. Tom Hargrove, VEISHEA 1996, Iowa State University. . . “

The experiences of what Hargrove went through made me realize that the little things in life that seem so bad really are not. Even though his long march to freedom is over, the memory of it will live with him forever.

Hargrove is the third ISU alumnus to have been held captive by international terrorists. Thomas Sutherland and Terry Anderson, ISU journalism graduates, were held in Lebanon for several years. Today, all three men are free.