Twenty-six years ago this October, Loy and Ludy Maturan, now of Juneau, were leaving their home in the Philippines with their 7-month-old granddaughter when armed men stopped their car. As Loy radioed for help, one of the men pistol-whipped him, he lost consciousness, and the trio\u2019s almost week-long ordeal began.<\/p>\n
Now, 26 years later, the Maturans have written a book about it, which they\u2019ve titled \u201cKidnapped by Muslim Rebels.\u201d They\u2019re self-publishing, and say it should be out within a few weeks.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe could not have decided to publish earlier for security reasons,\u201d said Loy, now 85. Ludy is 81. \u201cNow, we believe that we are safer here, in America.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ludy, a teacher, was wearing heels when the couple was kidnapped and ended up walking barefoot for miles in the woods. She was trying to carry their granddaughter but having a hard time walking barefoot over thorny ground, so one of the rebels took her.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u201dI kept on looking and trying to find out whether the baby is alive,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd then the baby cried, and I was so happy. That means she\u2019s alive. And it was good, because if I keep the baby, both of us would have died in that mountain full of thorns.\u201d<\/p>\n
The couple was kidnapped because their kidnappers wanted money; they asked for 1 million pesos (at the time, the equivalent of around $25,000) and two radio sets. They ended up being released for two radios and 25,000 pesos for \u201creimbursement of expenses.\u201d After they were released, some of their kidnappers approached them asking for the \u201cunpaid ransom money,\u201d which is part of the reason the couple had to leave.<\/p>\n
The book in which they tell their story is in five sections, and is mostly written by Loy, from his perspective. The first, \u201cOur Macedonian Call,\u201d describes Loy\u2019s decision to become the president of Dansalan College, a self-described \u201cprestigious Basic Educational Institute\u201d founded by missionaries in what is now the Islamic City of Marawi, the only Islamic city in the Philippines.<\/p>\n
He writes that he felt God was \u201ccalling me to Marawi to serve Him there among the Muslims to provide a Christian education for their youth.\u201d (Though the majority of the school\u2019s students are Muslim, the majority of its faculty is Christian, and it also describes itself as \u201ca Muslim-Christian partnership.\u201d)<\/p>\n
The second chapter describes the lead-up to their abductions.<\/p>\n
For years prior to the kidnapping, the family was harassed by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), who sent increasingly aggressive letters asking for \u201cdonations,\u201d sometimes in order to guarantee the safety of the couple\u2019s children.<\/p>\n
The prior president\u2019s term ended with his kidnapping in 1979, 10 years before the Maturans\u2019 ordeal. Part of the reason Loy was recruited for the job was because the college\u2019s board believed a Filipino president would be less likely to be abducted.<\/p>\n
The third chapter, with one account written by Loy and another by Ludy, describes their ordeal once kidnapped; the fourth describes negotiations the couple wasn\u2019t privy to at the time, and the fifth, aimed at those who might find themselves kidnapped in the same region (it\u2019s a relatively common occurrence) offers four \u201clessons\u201d aimed at resolving the situation as positively as possible.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was hard to forget the horrible experience we have had,\u201d Loy said. \u201cShould it happen now, we would have died\u2026 we were going over streams, wetland, logs in the forest. And we were thankful that during the nights we were in captivity, the weather was good, although in the Philippines, October and November is a typhoon month. When we were captured \u2014 abducted \u2014 the weather was good, and the sky was starry. That was kind of a divine provision for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
There were other moments of goodness along the way. Some of the people that cared for them and cooked them food – local people – boiled water from the lake and mixed it with condensed milk for the baby. Many of those people treated them very kindly, they said.<\/p>\n
Their Christian faith is central to how both of them dealt with the kidnapping.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was threatening, but I absorbed everything, and I felt the presence of God,\u201d Ludy said.<\/p>\n
When they were kidnapped, they were members of the city\u2019s Rotary and Radio clubs. Most of the other members \u2014 fellow teachers, lawyers, doctors and government officials \u2014 were Muslim. Those friends were a huge part of the reason the three were released when they were.<\/p>\n
\u201cI credit them with negotiating with our abductors,\u201d Loy said. \u201cNegotiations with Christians would take a longer time. That happened to my predecessor.\u201d<\/p>\n
The president before Maturan was kidnapped for 21 days.<\/p>\n
Maturan was also chaplain for the Iligan City chapter of Gideons International, an evangelical Christian association, and believes that the group\u2019s prayers helped the three receive help from God.<\/p>\n
After they were released, they filed for political asylum in California in 1991. Now, they\u2019re U.S. citizens.<\/p>\n
They hope to publish their book, which will sell for between $25 and $30, by the end of October. Loy also plans to revise it within the next few years; the last third of the book is letters, clippings from newspapers and telegrams, but they\u2019re still waiting for permission to include all of them.<\/p>\n
Loy also plans to write a sequel to \u201cKidnapped by Muslim Rebels\u201d about the couple\u2019s arrival in Juneau, largely through close family friends who lived here.<\/p>\n
Many in Juneau have heard about their ordeal, but Ludy doesn\u2019t like to talk about it \u2014 it makes her cry to think of the family they now see more rarely.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would rather go to the room, lay down and read,\u201d she says. \u201cHere, we are happy, but there are only two of us. That is sad.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of their sons lives in New York; a niece lives in Texas. The 7-month-old granddaughter kidnapped along with them, Trixzy Kay Maturan, is now married, has a 2-year-old child, and is expecting another.<\/p>\n
The couple visits the Philippines as often as they can, but have to \u201cplay incognito as much as possible,\u201d Loy said.<\/p>\n
The experience has made Loy think about Muslim-American relations in the Philippines, and in the United States, where he sees it becoming a larger issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe that the earlier we conduct a dialogue where we can accept the other for what we are and what we are not \u2014 unless we accept that fact \u2013\u2014 we will continue to have problems,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u2022 Contact Capital City Weekly staff writer Mary Catharine Martin at maryc.martin@capweek.com. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Twenty-six years ago this October, Loy and Ludy Maturan, now of Juneau, were leaving their home in the Philippines with their 7-month-old granddaughter when armed men stopped their car. As Loy radioed for help, one of the men pistol-whipped him, he lost consciousness, and the trio\u2019s almost week-long ordeal began. Now, 26 years later, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":21678,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":7,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[74],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-21677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","tag-arts-and-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21677\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21677"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=21677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}