Papers of Thomas M. Sutherland

Thomas McNee Sutherland (1931-2016) was a philanthropist and Emeritus Professor of Animal Sciences at Colorado State University (CSU). His 1985 capture and imprisonment in Lebanon and 1991 release resulted in international prominence.

Born on May 3, 1931, in Falkirk, Scotland, Sutherland earned a B.Sc. in Agriculture from Glasgow University in 1953. He moved to the U.S. and attended graduate school at Iowa State University, earning M.S (1956) and Ph.D. (1958) degrees in Animal Science. Tom Sutherland married Jean Ann Murray in 1958 in Ames, Iowa. They had three daughters: Ann, Kit, and Joan.

After graduation, Colorado State University hired Sutherland as Professor of Animal Sciences, and he researched feed efficiency and taught reproductive physiology at CSU for 26 years. He received the American Society of Animal Science Distinguished Teacher Award in 1975 and CSU's Harris T. Guard Distinguished Service Award for Teaching in 1976. Sutherland also focused on international development, serving as the Director of Training at the International Livestock Center for Africa in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in the late 1970s.

In 1983, Sutherland took leave from CSU to serve as the Dean of Faculty of Agriculture and Food Science at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon. The country was enmeshed in civil war, and Sutherland was kidnapped June 9, 1985, by gunmen with Islamic Jihad, a Shiite militia with ties to Iran. After being held hostage for 2,353 days, he was released November 18, 1991. Celebrations, primariy in Colorado and Iowa, followed his release.

Sutherland spent his later years as a public speaker and philanthropist. In 1996, he and his wife Jean coauthored At Your Own Risk: An American Chronicle of Crisis and Captivity in the Middle East, which detailed the couple's experiences during the hostage ordeal. Tom and Jean Sutherland established the Sutherland Family Foundation to support Fort Collins nonprofits with money they received from a 2001 $323 million settlement against Iran for its involvement in the hostage situation. In 2014, CSU awarded Sutherland the CSU Founders Day Medal for his service to the university and, more broadly, to higher education worldwide. Sutherland died July 22, 2016.

Jean Murray Sutherland (1934-2023) was a philanthropist and English instructor. She earned a bachelors degree in English from Iowa State University in 1956, and after marrying Tom Sutherland, she moved to Fort Collins, Colorado. She moved to Beirut, Lebanon, with Tom in 1983. She earned a Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Colorado in Boulder in 1985, a few months after Tom's capture in Beirut. She spent the next six and a half years trying to obtain Tom's freedom and teaching English at the Hariri Foundation at the American University of Beirut. After Tom's release, Jean accompanied him on many speaking engagements and coauthored At Your Own Risk: An American Chronicle of Crisis and Captivity in the Middle East. Jean died January 13, 2023.