Lloyd Van Vactor revisited

SEATTLE, WA. – The release of Gracia Burnham, an American missionary held captive by the Abu Sayyaf in Mindanao for nearly one year and released early this year, brought to my mind the case of another American missionary, Lloyd Van Vactor, who was kidnapped and held captive for 20 days in Marawi City in 1979. Last week, I had coffee with Lloyd Van Vactor in the home of Rev. Cirilo del Carmen and his wife Minda in Bellevue, Seattle. Lloyd and his late wife Maisie had been friends of Cirilo’s and my parents.

Prior to meeting Lloyd in Bellevue, I obtained a copy of the book, 20 Longest Days, written by Lloyd and Lindy Washburn and published by New Day Publishers.(If you’re lucky, you might still buy copies of it from New Day; call Tel. 9246544.) As Lloyd would confirm in our conversation, the reason for his kidnapping was different from that of Mrs Burnham and her husband Martin who was killed in a firefight between the Abu Sayyaf and Philippine government military forces. His was ideologically-based, and that of the Burnhams‚ was simply the work of bandits.

Lloyd had become well-known in Marawi and surrounding areas, and by his popularity and ensuing media reports on his kidnapping, his captors would gain publicity and attention to the plight of Muslims in Mindanao. None of the captors had known that the Burnhams were missionaries of the New Tribes Mission based in Luzon, and who gone to the Los Palmas Hotel in Palawan to celebrate their wedding anniversary. and were snatched along with local tourists.

Lloyd arrived in the Philippines in 1954 as a missionary of the United Church of Christ in the United States, serving in Cagayan de Oro City where he and his wife were involved in the training of clerical and lay leaders, youth and adult male and female organizations. Lloyd did a lot of traveling as he visited evangelical churches in Central Mindanao. (As an aside, when he visited in my home church in Gingoog City, he stayed in our home. I remember him as soft-spoken, bespectacled, tall and lanky, and very warm and friendly.)

In 1967, he and Maisie and their young sons Norman and Ross moved to Marawi City, in the province of Lanao, where Lloyd served as president of Dansalan College, the first junior college to offer high school education to the Muslim Maranao and Christian youths in the area. Lloyd expanded the college’s services to include a community service with programs in adult literacy, community organizing, agricultural extension, cooperatives, handicrafts and medical care, a research center with programs of publication, documentation, education and social research on Muslim Filipinos.

In the seventies, Marawi had a population of 75,000. Four centuries of hostility between Muslims and Christians had marked the relationship between the two communities in Marawi as well as in all Muslim-dominated areas in Mindanao.

Bloody conflicts broke out between rebel groups and Philippine Armed Forces in the province of Lanao.

As Lindy relates it in the book, Lanao had disparate "rebel" groups of varying ideological colors. The Jack Dimas group considered "by some lights" as the "true" revolutionary affiliate of the Moro National Liberation Front, co-existed with the Diamel Lucman group, which represented the Bangsa Moro Liberation Organization. Remnants of Abul Khyar Alonto’s Northern Mindanao Revolutionary Command were believed centered in Ramain; the Partisan Brigade operated freely around Ganassi. In Butig one heard of ulama or religious teachers drawing their followers to fight jihad or holy war.

As Lindy puts it: "As aboveground Maranao politics orbits around key figures commanding the allegiance of their place and clan, so underground – rebel‚ politics centers on individual leaders and their claims to loyalty and ties to certain locations. It is a personalistic system, prone to factionalism and intrigue. The fighters are mostly young, motivated by a lust for adventure, a thirst for revenge, or a taste for money. Some are full of revolutionary ardor, others of religious devotion."

The Maranao rebels are lumped by the Philippine government forces under the generic term "terrorists." On the other hand, the soldiers, called sondalo by the rebels, come from different Philippine Armed Forces units of the Philippine Army, Navy and Constabulary and are bolstered by the local manpower of the Integrated National Police, Civilian Home Defense Forces (CHDF) and the Provincial Guard. "Every second male, it seems, carried a gun. Outsiders in an alien land, these soldiers are as much products of misunderstanding as its producers," writes Lindy.

It was in this atmosphere of mistrust and to dispel the misunderstanding between the two communities, that Dansalan College carried out its activities. The college’s mission was not, however, to convert the Muslim Maranaos to Christianity, rather, "to give Christianity an authentic face‚ as a religion of peace, brotherhood, and mutual respect." Hundreds of Maranaos and a sprinkling of Christians who became leaders in their communities, obtained their high school and college education in the college.

In the evening of March 9, 1979, 11 soldiers spirited Lloyd from his office. The soldiers turned out to be Muslim rebels. Lloyd would be held captive in this saga that would last 20 days, and prompt Moustafa M. Dreiza, ambassador of the Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriyah to the Republic of the Philippines, to help in Lloyd’s release.

Van Vactor’s kidnappers were led by Jalendoni Marohombsar or Commander Alan, Mabou "Bobby" Yushop or Commander Bobby, and Avelino Langilao or Commander Billy Jack. Commander Bobby had figured prominently in the February 1978 kidnapping of two Filipino Catholic nuns, and Commander Billy Jack had been credited with the 1977 kidnapping of Virgil Springer, manager of an American timber company. The three referred to their group as the Partisan commandos.

The kidnappers took Lloyd to the mountains west of Lake Lanao and held him captive for 20 days. While in captivity, Lloyd was not told that his wife, Maisie, had died of an ailment she had had for years.

Although Lloyd told me in Seattle last week that the kidnapping was ideology-based, Lindy’s report says the kidnappers wanted $68,287 in three days. The committee that had been formed to administer Dansalan College (namely Azis M. Tawagon, Constancio Mamocatcat, Lindy Washburn, Bruce Tolentino, Fedelinda Tawagon and Howard Towne, replied in communications relayed by couriers that Lloyd’s mission board in New York said its policy was not to pay money for ransom. However, a local politician, Ruben Canoy, was able to get P100,000 from the United Church headquarters in Quezon City – money intended for a project – and had it turned over to the kidnappers.

Unlike the experience of Gracia Burnham and the other hostages held by the Abu Sayyaf, Lloyd was not harmed by his captors. In a letter to Col. Cesar Templo, who was part of the long list of military officers and civilians working for Lloyd’s release, Lloyd wrote however that he felt like he was "in a room with no windows nor door doors and I only hear voices. Consequently I have no frame of reference by which to evaluate the voices that I hear – from my Parisan companions."

And he wrote Maisie: "The days drag by and I long more and more to be with you again. . . I’ve never had so much time to be a contemplative monk before. I remind myself as I read the Scriptures that my prayers must go beyond our immediate situation and problem – although I self-centeredly do a lot of praying for the men with me and those who are supposed to be negotiating – as well as for all of you."

What was so amazing was the outpouring of grief and emotional support given to Lloyd by Muslims and Christians in the community – and the world which had gotten wind of Lloyd’s kidnapping. At his wife’s wake in Cagayan de Oro City, thousands of mourners of both faiths lined up to pay their respects to mom Maisie. There was only one Maranao radio station, and thousands of radios were beamed to the broadcast eulogy for her.

Meanwhile, government and military officials tried to persuade Billy Jack to release their captive. Ambassador Moustafa Dreiza of the Libyan Embassy, acting on his own, and not his government, went to Marawi to intercede for Lloyd’s release. A letter to his "brothers in Islam" appealed to them "in the name of Islam . . . and on behalf of my government" to release the American missionary. "Have come here with open heart and true Islamic feelings, the things which I expect to find in you as true Muslim." The message was taped and aired over the radio.

Lloyd was released on March 28.

Lloyd stayed another two years in Dansalan College. He had felt invigorated by the community’s giving him support during his captivity. By staying, he thought he would dispel the rumor that some forces would exact revenge for his kidnapping. One such rumor was that a patient in the college’s medical clinic would be killed.

Lloyd received several phone calls threatening he would be killed. After one such call, he conferred with Peter Gowing, a well-known anthropologist writing about Maranao’s history and its people, and decided it was time to return to the US. Working for the Board for World Ministries, the mission arm of the United Church of Christ n the US, he visited churches in 60 countries in 11 years.

Today Lloyd is settled in Bellevue, with his second wife, Myra. He is a part-time chaplain in the Northshore UCC, and spends a lot of time telling people about positive Muslim-Christian relations.

Lloyd said he saw no changes in the life of the average Maranao farmer over the last few years. He keeps hoping that "the leadership will come along that would keep things turn around. My heart aches to read about so much poverty that is caused by graft and corruption in the leadership."

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