Restless retiree

Lifestyle/Technology: Radical robber, Christian poverty-fighter Gerry Phelps is redeeming time | Susan Olasky

Photo by David Phelps

Retirement for Gerry Phelps means reading through her Bible for the 45th time. From her 15th-floor apartment in the RBJ Towers, a low-income senior citizen complex founded by Lyndon Baines Johnson in honor of his mother Rebekah, Phelps can read and enjoy a panoramic view of downtown Austin: capitol dome, corporate towers, the University of Texas campus.

The LBJ connection is a nice touch. Phelps despised him and Richard Nixon, and in 1969 went to prison for her role in the botched armed robbery of a liquor store meant to raise funds for a radical, anti-war newspaper. At the time she committed the crime, Phelps was a leftist, working on her Ph.D. and teaching economics at the University of Houston.

In prison she became a Christian. In 1976, after serving seven years of a 35-year sentence, she gained parole to San Francisco. She attended there a Methodist seminary where fellow students shared her politics but didn't understand her prison-formed, Bible-based belief in Christ and His miracles.

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