ISLESBORO — Frank Reed’s former teaching colleagues in Maine were thrilled Monday as he was released by Lebanese captors who kidnapped him 3 1/2 years ago, but they wondered why the kidnappers had to keep Reed so long.

“Living here on this island, you don’t feel like anything like that could touch you from way across the ocean,” said Emogene Rolerson, who remembered Reed as a young and energetic high school science teacher and basketball coach. “You think you’re isolated, and you’re not, really.”

Reed taught at Islesboro, in Penobscot Bay, from 1959 to 1961 after graduating from the University of Maine with a degree in math and chemistry.

“I remember Frank well,” Mrs. Rolerson said. “He was a person who liked a lot of action. He liked to be doing and going. He was always in the thick of everything.

“I can’t imagine him being cooped up all the time that he’s been cooped up,” she said. “I think it’s wonderful that they finally let him go. I don’t know why they kept him as long as they did.”

Mrs. Rolerson said many of Reed’s old friends have gone their separate ways, but some have been talking by phone as his ordeal in Lebanon came to an end.

A previously unknown Islamic group in Beirut said Sunday that Reed would be freed within 48 hours, and Reed was freed Monday.

“We’re very pleased,” said Susan Peterson, who was one of two teachers under Reed’s supervision when he later served as principal of tiny South Bristol High School.

A native of Malden, Mass., Reed, 57, left Islesboro to become principal at South Bristol, where he also taught and coached basketball and baseball. During the summer, he supplemented his income by working as a local golf pro.

“He had to be very active to be the principal with just a staff of two,” Mrs. Peterson recalled shortly before Reed was released. After Reed left, the town sent its students to Lincoln Academy in Newcastle.

Donna Plummer, a teacher and neighbor of Reed when he lived in South Bristol, said she was pleasantly surprised at the news Reed was being freed, because Reed’s name had not been mentioned among those likely to be released.

Mrs. Plummer said she and her family had visited Reed several times after he left South Bristol and returned to Malden, but they eventually lost touch.

Reed held teaching jobs in Massachusetts and New Hampshire before becoming director of elementary education at Beirut’s International College in 1977.

Reed, the husband of a Syrian Moslem woman, was abducted Sept. 9, 1986.