
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, May 18, 1990                   TAG: 9005180790
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A/2   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: associated press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Short

POLHILL RECOVERING FROM SURGERY

Freed hostage Robert Polhill is resting in an intensive care unit after having his cancerous vocal cords surgically removed, and next faces the challenge of learning to speak with no voice box.

"His condition is good," Ben Smith, spokesman for Walter Reed Army Medical Center, said following the four-hour operation Thursday. "The surgeons characterized the operation as successful."

The former hostage, 55, who was released by Shiite Moslem kidnappers last month after 39 months in captivity in Lebanon, could speak barely above a whisper when he arrived in the United States on April 27, a warning sign of larynx cancer.

The business and accounting professor had lost 25 pounds while in captivity. Physicians waited until last week to perform a biopsy so that he could regain the weight and strength needed for general anesthesia.

by CNB