Is Thomas r Hargrove still alive?

Answer 1

Tom Hargrove dies at 66 By Bronwyn Turner

Correspondent

Published January 26, 2011

Tom Hargrove, international agriculturalist, adventurer and author whose scribbled diary notes while a hostage of Columbian guerrillas inspired a movie, died Saturday in Houston of heart failure. He was 66, and had lived in Galveston more than 14 years.

Hargrove came to Galveston not long after his release from captivity in 1995. He and his wife embraced the character and history of the island as a safe harbor while Hargrove restarted his life.

"He felt like he was given a second chance," said Miles Hargrove, the oldest of two sons. "He wasn't haunted by it (the captivity); he was stronger because of it."

While in Galveston, Hargrove pieced together the daily journal he had kept in 11 months of captivity, scribbled on the back of his Colombian peso checkbook and other scraps of paper. The result was the book, "Long March to Freedom." The movie, "Proof of Life," starring Russell Crowe and Meg Ryan, was loosely based on the story and was released in 2000.

"He's a survivor," Miles Hargrove said via cell phone as he and his brother Geddie traveled to Rotan in northwest Texas to prepare for the funeral. "He was such an amazing man for having the endurance and stamina to survive it."

The small town of Rotan, northwest of Abilene, will host an international gathering for the service set for 2 p.m. Saturday at the First United Methodist Church.

Hargrove's work promoting the development of crops with higher yields and more disease resistance in the developing world created a network of friends around the world.

"It's going to be kind of like a United Nations," Geddie Hargrove said.

Saturday's service will include country and western music Hargrove wrote himself. He was never able to persuade Nashville record companies to buy it.

"They told him it was too intellectual," Geddie Hargrove said.

Hargrove was familiar with country tunes, having grown up on a cotton farm in West Texas, the middle of three children of Tom and Bargy Hargrove.

He graduated from Texas A&M University with degrees in agricultural science and journalism, then earned a master's degree from Iowa State University.

He shipped out to Vietnam in the U.S. Army, part of a team helping spread a high-yielding rice called IR8, which doubled and tripled yields in farms there. Years later, Hargrove learned some of the farmers had worked for the Viet Cong.

"They said they had the opportunity to kill him, but decided not to because he was actually doing some good, helping the farmers," Geddie Hargrove said.

After the war, Hargrove worked with the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines. He then moved on to Cali, Columbia, to head the communications unit for the International Center for Tropical Agriculture. He was on his way to work in 1994 when he was captured at a roadblock.

Susan Hargrove died in 2009.

"He was bigger than life," Miles Hargrove said. "He didn't have a mean bone in his body. He had a great sense of humor and a real passion for life."