You'd never imagine...

You would never imagine that your good friends from high school and college could become radical anarchists and kidnappers. But life is full of surprises.

I'd never heard of Patty Hearst when the news reports said that she had been kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA). And what kind of an army is that, by the way?

With Patty Hearst celebrating a significant birthday this week, it got me thinking about those years in mid-70's when she was kidnapped and all that happened until she was found. Several of my friends and I were dragged into the debacle by association and it became quite an unbelievable ordeal.

Not too much information was released after the kidnapping. It was all about Patty and her family. But when she was spotted in a bank robbery where a woman was killed, the situation heated up considerably. Eventually a shoot-out with police occurred and the house that the SLA was hiding in was burned to ground. Most of the key members of the organization were identified then and we realized that one of those killed was Angela Atwood, who we knew as "Angel" DeAngelis, a sorority sister of Jane's and a member of a popular campus singing group, including Jane Pauley, that I performed with and helped manage.

It had been a couple of years since we'd been with Angel and, obviously, her life had taken a dramatic turn when she moved to California. She had been the voice of the SLA in all the calls and recordings that were part of the kidnapping. Bewilderment was the feeling that came of us when we learned she had been killed.

But that was just the beginning, because when we heard the next piece of news, it came even closer to home for me. Patty Hearst had escaped the fire with two other SLA members, Bill and Emily Harris. The first reports called him "William" but I soon realized it was Bill, a close friend in high school whom I had recruited at the university as well. He had been in the Marines after graduation and returned to campus to study for a master's in drama when I last saw him about a year before the fire. We both had a penchant for acting in high school and were in two productions together, including the Diary of Anne Frank where he's pictured here, on the far left, playing my son.

Our association became front page local news as the story played out. It wasn't too long before I was initially interviewed by the FBI and our mail was routinely opened and then stapled shut with an "FBI Search" stamp on the envelope.  Several of our college chums were shadowed also and one former classmate was approached by Bill for refuge at her apartment in the middle of the night.  She refused him and felt very lucky to report the encounter to authorities.

In an ironic twist of fate, the agent in charge of the case was an old Army buddy of mine. We were both recruited while we were in the service by an agent stationed on our base. He took the bait and joined up and I went on to other things. We had a good reunion after the debacle was over but it was all business at the time.

I was writing as a correspondent for a daily newspaper in those days and my ruminations on this situation while the Harrises and Patty were still at-large got a fair amount of attention. When they were captured a year later, I heard the news on the car radio driving back home from a business trip.  I remember being relieved that they were taken alive.  The piece I wrote after their arrest got quite a bit of national play and even the editor of TIME magazine sent me a kind note wishing that someone had answers to the questions I had raised about how a person can become so overtaken by an ideology that builds on and promotes violence against a certain social strata.

Bill Harris served his time.  We corresponded while he was in prison and his letters were full of vitriol against society. He now works as a legal aide to one of the lawyers who defended him. On more than one occasion, he has returned to his hometown and seen some of our old high school and college friends.  I haven't seen him myself but I'm told he looks well and seems "rehabilitated".  There still are no answers to why he took that radical turn in his life. I cannot imagine that a "Richie Cunningham" childhood could become so dark and sinister to do the things that Bill Harris and the SLA did back then. I truly hope we're all getting better at living together. We simply have to.