Does anybody remember Lieut. Col. William R. Higgins? Does anybody remember he had a wife and daughter and had dreams for the future?
Lieutenant Colonel Higgins was stationed with the U.N. when he was kidnapped three and a half years ago in Lebanon. Do you remember him now? When CNN flashed pictures of the nine American hostages in 1988, he was one of them. Two years ago, his captors claimed to have executed him in retaliation for the Israeli capture of Sheik Obeid. Do you remember him now, the hanged man on the front pages? No one has heard a word about him since then. When the State Department calls "the hostage families," the Higgins family is no longer on the list.
In a year when Americans sported T-shirts saying "Support our troops," did that include Lieutenant Colonel Higgins? In all the rhetoric now about the release of hostages, is anyone talking about him? When Peggy Say praises her brother's captors for the good treatment he is receiving, when she says they are not liars, when she implores Israel to think about freeing Sheik Obeid, does she remember Lieutenant Colonel Higgins? When these animals who call themselves Hezbollah seek the help of the U.N. Secretary General, do they remember what they did to one of his men?
I ache for the families of Terry Anderson, Thomas Sutherland, Joseph Cicippio, Alann Steen and Jesse Turner. I pray for the release of these innocent men. I rejoice as each man is freed. But I also remember Lieutenant Colonel Higgins. He was my husband and I miss him.
(text of August 14, 1991 New York Times article)