2018 Lenten Program, Day 38

DAY #38, March 29, 2018
Portsmouth

LIEUT. ROBERT O. GOODMAN, JR.
(1956-  )
Valerie Cunningham

On Jan. 2, 1984, Lt. Robert O. Goodman, Jr., a 27-year-old Navy flier held by Syria for more than a month after having been shot down over Lebanon, arrived on an Air Force carrier in Washington where he was met by his wife and two young children.

The lieutenant was taken to the U.S. Naval Medical Center to be examined. During a hectic morning that focused national attention on the Goodman family, Lt. Goodman’s parents praised the Rev. Jesse Jackson on network news* for meeting with Syria’s president and pressing for their son’s release.

Mrs. Goodman said since her son was a young boy, he was interested in flying. His father was an Air Force lieutenant colonel stationed at a base in Puerto Rico where Robert was born. He was 10 years old when the family transferred to New Hampshire. Mrs. Goodman said her son, who is 5 feet 8 inches tall and slightly built, was a running back on the Portsmouth High School football team — ”never a starter, but he always made the team.” She said that although Goodman was not an outstanding student, he was determined and strong-willed.

He applied and graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1978, became a navigator-bombardier and was assigned to Attack Squadron 85 when it sailed to Lebanon in October, 1983. Their mission was to drop 1,000-lb bombs on Syrian tanks and anti-aircraft in Lebanon, close to the Syrian border. On Dec. 4, during an attack on Syrian positions east of Beirut, Lt. Goodman’s two-seat, A-6E Intruder was shot down by a surface-to-air missile. Both he and the pilot, Lt. Mark A. Lange, 26, of Fraser, Mich., managed to eject and parachute out of the burning plane. The next thing Goodman remembered was being tied up and tossed in the back of a truck. He had no idea where he was being taken, or who his captors were. And it was only later that he learned that Lange died of his injuries.

“Once we got to Damascus, I was taken to a cell and then brought up for interrogation,” he says. “I remember thinking very clearly — I have been cast into the middle of this conflict in the Middle East, which has been going on for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, and which I’ve been trying to solve with thousands of pounds of bombs.” The Syrians were anxious to know about his bombing mission and Goodman was equally anxious not to tell them any details — or let on that he had been shot down before a single bomb had been dropped. “They weren’t aggressive. They didn’t threaten me. They were just persistent,” he recalls. “It was stressful because I was trying to make stuff up, and also remember what I was making up in case they asked me about it again.” Between interrogation sessions, he was left alone in his basement cell, with only a single light bulb and little sense of time. He feared that no-one outside knew what had happened to him.

In fact, news of his capture had spread quickly around the globe. The U.S. government made numerous attempts to free him. From across America, people sent Christmas cards. He was visited by the US ambassador to Syria, and a delegation of religious leaders led by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, traveled to Damascus to petition President Hafez al-Assad for Goodman’s release. Assad had decided to release Goodman, Jackson says, because it was in his interests to do so.

“It was a joyous moment,” Lt. Goodman recalls, but what he felt most was “incredibly tired.” He was feted as an American hero — a role, he did not feel comfortable with: “That’s something I have never been able to reconcile. I didn’t feel I had done something heroic. I look back on it as an interesting slice of time, but not something I conquered — rather as something I managed to get through.” Goodman retired with the rank of commander in 1995.

*This story is adapted from reports in The New York Times and BBC

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