Cloak of Silence Still Veils Waite
Episcopal News Service. April 23, 1987 [87091]
NEW YORK (DPS, April 23) -- Take one towering troubleshooter. Add danger. Throw in courage, a drop of granstanding and a huge dollop of integrity. Put in a hot spot and let rise.
The result, according to some observers, is Terry Waite, the bewhiskered personal aide of Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie. What is missing from that description is Waite's tremendous patience and the abiding sense of human interest that drives him to seek the good in anyone he meets; the factors that complete the baggage of the Anglican Communion's most visible mediator, now a captive himself.
How does a civilian, the son of a village cop from England, rise to take center stage in the drama played with the lives of the hostages in Lebanon? How does one so obscure attract enormous publicity? And earn a reputation as a folk hero and become known as -- "the Anglican Henry Kissenger?"
Before his disappearance recently on his fifth trip to Lebanon, Waite had won freedom for eight hostages from Libya, Iran and Lebanon since taking on that role in 1980.
He has had to go head-to-head with such notoriously recalcitrant leaders as Libya's Moammar Khadafy and Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. But Waite wrested from them a winning reputation for his knack in carrying out successful, low-key, behind-the-scenes troubleshooting, free of any ideology except a commitment to finding common ground in human need.
Waite grew up in the northwestern English village of Styal, with his father, Thomas, often admonishing him, "If you start something, see it through to the finish." Driven by wanderlust, he left school at 16, without any idea of what he wanted to do. The 6-foot-7-inch, 250-pounder decided he was not cut out for a desk job and joined the Grenadier Guards to see the world. But after a year, he was forced to resign because of an allergy to the khaki dye in military uniforms.
Waite decided to live his life "as a vocation and not just do a job," and joined the Church Army, an Anglican organization dedicated to serving the Church in teaching, administrative and service roles. His career has mostly been in church affairs. "He has no political point of view what so ever," an associate said.
Waite studied theology and became an adviser to the Anglican bishop of Bristol. In 1968, he became adviser to the archbishop of Uganda. There, he and his wife, Frances, who have three daughters and a son, were held at gunpoint for hours during a mass expulsion of foreigners after Idi Amin's takeover.
He served in Rome as adviser to the Vatican on African missionary activities from 1972-79. He developed an appreciation for the religious part of political fights, whether in Lebanon, Libya or Iran. In his December 1984 meeting with Khadafy in the Bedouin's richly carpeted tent within his barracks in Tripoli, Waite debated the effect of Greek philosophy on Islam and Christianity.
Waite once confided to a reporter that the one city he truly feared was Beirut. But Waite, 47, penned a note requesting no ransom be paid if he, too, were kidnapped. He then packed his bulletproof vest and copies of two of his favorite books, The Diary of Samuel Pepys and Rupert Bear's Birthday Party, and went off to the world capital of anarchy to fulfill a promise he had made to spend part of the Christmas season with the hostages and their captors -- the people, unknown to most of westerners, who have dominated his life for years.