Freed hostage Frank Reed shed tears of joy with his 91-year-old mother, but his joyous reunion was tempered with concern for six Americans still held captive in Lebanon.
"They are sick. I promise you they are sick. Let us not forget them," said Reed, returning home Sunday for a three-day break. He is undergoing medical tests at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland."This weekend we are memorializing the dead that fought for our country," Reed told reporters. "Let us hope that one day we don't have to have a day to memorialize the hostages that are dead or will die."
Reed, who was released April 30 after 44 months in captivity in Lebanon, saw his mother for the first time since March 1982 in a tearful reunion at Boston's Logan International Airport.
"He said to me, `You're a great mother,' " said Leota Sprague, who was too weak to join her son earlier. "I say rejoice, give thanks."
"She looks lovely," said Reed with his mother at his side.
The Reed family, including his wife, Fahima, and 9-year-old son, Tarek, traveled by motorcade to his daughter Marilyn Langston's house in this suburb just north of Boston, where cheering neighbors and 100 yellow ribbons awaited the hometown celebrity. The suburb of 56,000 planned a parade for Reed on Tuesday.
For Reed, it was a day of quiet joys. He caught up on lost time with his mother, played with a 6-year-old granddaughter he had never met and feasted on a Maine lobster and a can of his favorite beer.
Reed said doctors were trying to find out why he is so anemic.
"We're trying to do some things to verify the contusions and results of the beatings I had for trying to escape twice, not really being left alone until a few months ago," Reed said. "Despite it all, they say my heart's fine, my lungs are fine, my liver's fine."
After his release, Reed told reporters his kidnappers chained him to a wall or radiator, broke his nose, jaw and ribs, slightly fractured his feet with iron rods and bloodied his kidneys for twice trying to escape.
Some military and administration officials have said there may be discrepancies in Reed's accounts of his captivity. Relatives have said he was having problems with his short-term memory.
Reed also spoke out on behalf of the other hostages he said were in ill health.
Meanwhile, a pro-Iranian fundamentalist leader said in remarks published Monday that the captors of British hostages may set free a captive if Britain would expel Salman Rushdie, author of "The Satanic Verses."