(NEW YORK TIMES)

Peggy Say, who waged a nearly seven-year campaign to keep the world from forgetting about her younger brother Terry A. Anderson, the American hostage held longest by Shiite militiamen in Lebanon, died on Wednesday in Cookeville, Tenn. She was 74.

The cause was complications of lung disease, Mr. Anderson said.

Mr. Anderson, who was the chief Mideast correspondent for The Associated Press, was abducted on March 16, 1985, and held hostage by militiamen with ties to Iran, much of the time chained to furniture in a basement in Beirut. Afterward Ms. Say wrapped the nation in a figurative yellow ribbon of remembrance, making her brother a symbol of what began to seem like a lost cause.

She rallied his fellow journalists, ordinary Americans, humanitarian groups and world figures, including President Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II, Mother Teresa and Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader.

All the while, she withstood invective from critics who accused Mr. Anderson of leaving himself vulnerable to the vagaries of civil war in Lebanon, and who warned that Ms. Say’s public lobbying on his behalf jeopardized delicate private diplomacy and prolonged his captivity.

Negotiations with Iranians and others by Giandomenico Picco, a special envoy representing Javier Perez de Cuellar, the United Nations secretary general at the time, eventually produced an agreement in which the militiamen would release 10 Western hostages, including Mr. Anderson, over several months while Israeli-backed forces in southern Lebanon freed dozens of Arabs they had seized.

Mr. Anderson was released on Dec. 4, 1991, after being held longer than any of the more than 90 other foreigners kidnapped during Lebanon’s civil war. Of those, 11 died or were believed to have been killed.

“I did what I had to do as his sister,” Ms. Say said on the eve of her brother’s release. “I don’t think the United Nations would ever have intervened if we had not kept the plight of Terry and other people alive.”

Peggy Rae Anderson was born in Lorain, Ohio, on Feb. 15, 1941, the daughter of Glen and Lily Anderson. She grew up in Batavia, N.Y., between Buffalo and Rochester. Her father was a truck driver, her mother a waitress. Both were alcoholics, according to a profile published in 1994 in People magazine.

Peggy left home at 17 to marry. Twice divorced, the second time from a husband she described as abusive, she was living with her third husband, David, in Florida when she enrolled at Daytona Beach Community College at the age of 42. (Terry was the first in the family to graduate from high school and then from college.)

After her brother was abducted, Ms. Say took a leave and moved back to Batavia to campaign for his release with the support of The Associated Press.

“In a very short time, she made herself into a national figure as the family face of long and frustrating efforts to win freedom for her brother,” said Louis D. Boccardi, who was president of The Associated Press at the time. “She never took ‘no’ for an answer.”

During Mr. Anderson’s captivity, a daughter of his was born and his father and a brother died.

Ms. Say’s hopes for him seesawed as Reagan first refused to negotiate with terrorists, then struck a deal with hijackers of a T.W.A. passenger jet to free their prisoners and traded an imprisoned Soviet spy for an American journalist detained in the Soviet Union.

“What I have learned is that when it’s politically expedient, they get the job done,” she said.

Washington’s secret deal to sell weapons to Iran presented another opportunity, but it vanished in the face of revelations of what became known as the Iran-contra affair, in which proceeds from arms sales to Iran were diverted to support Nicaraguan rebels.

“My mail indicated that I was personally responsible for Ronald Reagan getting himself into a jam,” Ms. Say told The New York Times in 1986. She appealed to the president in an Op-Ed article in The Times on Nov. 13, 1987.

“Don’t use American weapons of war,” she wrote, urging Reagan to appoint a special envoy to negotiate the hostages’ release. “This time, use American weapons of conscience.”

After the hostages were freed, Ms. Say reflected on why their release had taken so long.

“These hostages never became a cause célèbre for various reasons: There was no dramatic footage, no tense interviews, no dictator to overthrow, no oil in Lebanon to threaten the world market,” she wrote in another Times Op-Ed article, which was published the day after Mr. Anderson was released. “Just a gaunt, bearded hostage every few years, blinking in the sunlight, while flashbulbs popped and cameras rolled.”

A year later, Ms. Say wrote in Redbook magazine that Mr. Anderson had never thanked her. But she acknowledged that they had never been very close and added that she had “orchestrated a fantasy that he couldn’t possibly have lived up to.”

“After his return,” she wrote, “Terry needed to focus on himself.”

Mr. Anderson expressed gratitude in an email on Thursday, writing: “I am thankful for her unceasing efforts. I think they provided us, as well as all our families, with hope. The publicity also, I believe, gave our captors reason not to simply kill us when they had concluded their strategy was not working.”

He wrote a book about his ordeal, “Den of Lions: A Startling Memoir of Survival and Triumph,” hosted a radio talk show and taught journalism. He retired recently.

In addition to him, Ms. Say is survived by a daughter, Melody Smith; a son, Edward Langendorfer; three grandchildren; another brother, John; and a sister, Judy.

Before she retired to Cookeville, about 80 miles east of Nashville, Ms. Say resumed her college education. Just before getting her degree in 1994, she noticed a job opening for a counselor at a women’s shelter.

“I said, ‘There’s my job,’ ” she told People. “I had never thought of using the experience of being battered until that moment. I thought, ‘I know about that. I can help.’ ”

She also knew about perseverance.

“Peggy has a special patience and wisdom,” Tammy Clavenger, the shelter director, was quoted as saying, “that no amount of education can give you.”