CHICO, Calif. -- Alann Steen, an ex-Marine who was one of four Americans taken hostage in Beirut Saturday, slept with a pistol by his bed and a rifle in the closet, said a friend of the journalism professor.
Howard Seemann, a professor at Humboldt State University in Arcata, Calif., got a letter from the former Chico State University instructor last week to express thanks for the old journalism books sent to him.
'Last summer he indicated this would probably be his last year because things had gotten so out of hand, so chaotic,' Seemann said of his friend, who was one of four Americans abducted at Beirut University College where Steen was a professor of communictions.
Police, students and the chairman of the Humanities Department at the English-language university identified one of the hostges, Dr. Mithileshwar Singh, as an Indian who is a naturalized American citizen.
A state department spokewoman expressed doubt that he is a naturalized American citizen but said he could be a legal permanent resident of the United States.
Seemann described Steen, 46, as 'the good American, the opposite of the ugly American. He was very relaxed, patient and pleasant and that was what made him a good teacher.'
Steen, an ex-Marine who served in the Far East during the Vietnam War, was said to have felt safe when he lived off-campus in an apartment with a pistol by his bed and an automatic rifle in the closet. He was only nervous while walking the streets where his fair complexion made him stand out, Seemann said.
But Steen took up residence on campus for safety reasons, and last year married a fellow faculty member.
Steen, a Humboldt graduate who once edited a weekly and taught at the school, has two grown daughters by a former marriage.
In an interview with the student newspaper at Humboldt in Sept. 1985, Steen said it was frightening to be an American amid the violence in Beirut.
'There's a feeling of trepidation, a feeling that it could be me. You need a scorecard to keep up with them,' he said of the battles.
'In between, life goes on so normally. I walk down to the coffee shop and get my coffee, go to the nut store and buy pistaschios, rent my videos at the video shop and maybe stop off for an ice cream cone on the way home.'
But he said the sectarian violence 'has made me an agnostic very quickly.'
In a Christmas letter postmarked last Dec. 13 to Seeman and Herschel Wilson, both journalism professors at Humbolt, Steen thanked them for sending several textbooks but noted that violence in Beirut was stepping up.
'School continues until the 23rd, then two and one half weeks of vacation,' he said. 'We hope to get to the mountains but the fighting in the camps is terrible. Today was the worst in a couple of weeks.'
Last July, Steen married Virginia Rose, an art history instructor at the Beirut school.
A 1956 graduate of Hingham High School in Hingham, Mass., Steen earned bachelor's and master's degrees from Humboldt and briefly edited a weekly newspaper in nearby Arcata, The Union.
He lectured in journalism at the school for about 10 years before moving on to Chico State University in 1981. He went to Beirut in 1983, officials said.
