Afterlives of the Revolutionaries

By Kevin Fedarko

Both the movement and the revolution died years ago, but the network is still alive. When news of Katherine Power's surrender became public, phones began ringing as a fellowship of aging rebels who hadn't spoken in years reached out to talk about endings. An end to the '60s. An end to the belief that the only way to stop an unjust war abroad was to start an unlawful one at home. And more than anything else, an end to another life on the run.

"I felt a little deflated," confessed Alan Berkman, physician to both the Weather Underground and the Black Liberation Army and the first doctor charged with "providing assistance and comfort" to fugitives since Samuel Mudd treated John Wilkes Booth in 1865. After two years on the run, Berkman was captured in 1985 and spent seven years in prison. He now works for the Osborne Association, helping released prisoners cope with life. "Kathy Power had become something of a mythic figure. Always out there, always free. The one the police couldn't catch."

The police never caught Bernardine Dohrn either. In the early '70s, she and the Weather Underground took part in 12 bombings. After almost 11 years on the lam, she gave herself up in 1980, plea-bargaining for three years of probation and a $1,500 fine. Dohrn, a lawyer since 1967, is today director of Northwestern University Legal Clinic's Children and Family Justice Center. Dohrn is married to ex-Weatherman Bill Ayers, who teaches education at the University of Illinois. They have two children and are rearing the son of fellow radical Katherine Boudin, who is serving 20 years in prison for her role in the 1981 Brink's robbery in which three people were killed.

"I live fully in the present," says Dohrn, who keeps the door to her radical history firmly locked. "I'm as settled about my past as anyone who's 51 can be. I'm not seeking a public role as a radical in the media." But some colleagues will not overlook her past. Says Professor Daniel Polsby: "This woman set a bomb off in the U.S. Capitol, for heaven's sake! And then she says, 'Ha, ha, I'm not sorry.' This is a school of law, not a dental school!" Counters Dohrn's former attorney Don Reuben: "She picked herself up from her past and has done socially good work for years now. What do they want her to do? Do they want a public flogging?"

With reporting by Edward Barnes/New York and Sheila Gribben/Chicago