The Indianapolis Star from Indianapolis, Indiana • Page 45

The Indianapolis Star Foots Sunday, February 6, 2000 EDITORIALS 2 LETTERS AND COLUMNS 3-5 BOOK REVIEWS 8 Mew Yorker, flew Yorker Ex-staffer takes an idealized look at magazine's heyday. Page 8 InfoLine: 624-INFO (4636) Online: www.starnews.com From subversive to suburbia 1 7 Suspected revolutionary on the run for 23 years built a new life as an upper-middle-class activist. of the infamous Symbionese Liberation Army who was charged with trying to murder police officers. She had been on the run since 1976. Montgomery didn't recognize either name, but she knew the face immediately.

It was Nancy. Last June 16, Sara Jane Olson was on her way to teach an English and citizenship class at the Center for Victims of Torture when an agent stepped up to the driver's window of her minivan. "FBI, Kathleen," he said. "It's over." For the better part of two decades, Soliah had been hiding in plain sight, just a few hours' drive from her small-town North Dakota birthplace. The 70s radical was ensconced in a suburban St.

Paul neighborhood, living in a $280,000 Tudor-style home filled with vining plants, knitted lap blankets and her collections of Depression glass, ceramic Christmas villages and porcelain dolls. See SUBURBIA Page 6 y' Associated Press In the darkened sanctuary of a former Seattle synagogue, three women methodically move their hands from their stomachs to their hips to their breasts and back again. They are not just exploring their bodies, but the notion that those bodies female bodies define their roles in life. "Our bellies," they say in unison, smiling and cooing to the Womyn's Theatre audience. "Our bodies our eggies are enough are enough are enough." Then, with their backs to the crowd, the question: "ARE THEY?" Nancy Bennett, a newcomer to town, wanted badly to do this feminist play, and she shone.

Theater director Mary Montgomery was eager to cast this husky-voiced woman with fiery blue eyes and strawberry blond hair in another piece, but Bennett had to go. "She set an absolute deadline for her last performance and said, 'I can't be available after this says Montgomery. "And there was no explanation offered." And so, after Just four performances, Bennett was gone. She left little trace, other than a review in an obscure women's journal and a red-and-gold afghan she had crocheted for Montgomery. In the 23 years since, Montgomery had all but forgotten the young actress.

Then last summer, she picked up the newspaper and read about the arrest of Sara Jane Olson, a 52-year-old doctor's wife, mother of three girls and respected local actress in Minnesota. The news story said Olson was actually Kathleen Ann Soliah a member Associated Press Photos 70s radical: Kathleen Ann Soliah spoke at a 1974 memorial service for.Symbionese Liberation Army members in Berkeley, Calif. Captured: Kathleen Ann Soliah took the name Sara Jane Olson and lived a quiet life for 23 years as a fugitive from a 1976 federal indictment. i i 1 McCain's rescuer i watching campaign Vietnamese man who pulled downed pilot out of lake says he'd vote for former enemy if he could. 4 A "mm By Mark McDonald KNIGHT ftlDDER NEWSPAPERS Kim HANOI, Vietnam "He's the erw emy! Let him die!" That is what Mai Van On's nHrthhnrs shnirted as thp retired army colonel furiously swam out to save the drowning American pilot.

The desperate flier, John Sidney McCain III, had floated down into Hanoi's True Bach Lake after his Navy Skyhawk bomber was hit by -a North Vietnamese missile. It was" late morning, Oct. 26, 1967. The 31-year-old Navy lieutenant commander would survive being shot down, For 15 years, John Artis was imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit. But while the man he refused to condemn is celebrated, Artis has been all but forgotten.

would survive his excruciating rescue, would survive the next five years In the notorious "Hanoi Hilton" By Carol Morello THE WASHINGTON POST 151 ORTSMOUTH, Va. He was a local hero, lionized in and around Pater- son, N.J., for his athletic prowess. So the shock was palpable when police charged John Artis with a triple homicide. Artis and the man with him that June night in 1966 insisted from the start that they were not the two black men seen fleeing the Lafayette Bar and Grill after three white people were slain. Though the pair passed lie detector tests, they ran up against a system that sanctioned tainted and suppressed evidence, and their two trials were stained by overt appeals to racial fears.

In May 1967, an all-white jury found Artis and his co-defendant guilty, sentencing them to three life terms each. More than two decades would pass before Artis could clear his reputation. By now, most people have heard of middleweight boxing contender Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, whose name and story became the grist first for a classic Bob Dylan song and now for a blockbuster movie starring Denzel Washington. But John Artis, Carter's co-defendant, remains all but forgotten, a bit player in the film and the lore. Limos do not squire Artis around for talk show prison.

He. also would survive two suicide attempts, before he finally was released on March 15, 1973. For Mai Van On, who was 50 at I the time, life returned pretty mucrt to normal after he rescued the en- emy pilot, though some of his -neighbors didn't much care for "heroics." They saw me as a close friend of America, and for a while it was a little difficult for me," On said one recent day, opening up a blue pacH of Thu Do (Freedom) cigarettes. "The police came around and asked me some questions, but I I told them 1 was just a normal citi- zen and I did this (rescue) by in- stinct." Over the years, On said, he has avidly followed McCain's political career, and lately he has been nervously watching the American presidential campaign. I "If I could vote for John McCain for president," he said, "I would raise both hands up high for On that gray morning 32 years ago, McCain was knocked uncon- scious briefly when he ejected from his damaged bomber.

Both of his -arms were broken, his right knee -was shattered, and when he splashed into the middle of True Bach (White Silk) Lake, his 50 pounds of flight gear kept him from reaching the surface. When On finally got to him, about 200 yards out, all the older man could see was a bit of white silk, the top of the American's parachute. With U.S. planes still bombing -and strafing their target of the day a nearby light bulb factory where On worked as a security ttnarH Dn iiqpH a stnnt hamhnn See HURRICANE Page 6 f' Celebrity: The life of ex-boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter is the subject of a film starring Denzel Washington. Carter calls Artis his hero for Artis' refusal to say Carter committed the killings.

Associated Press pole to hoist McCain off the bottom of the lake, "If I had hesitated even one more minute, I'm sure he would have died," said On, still vigorous at 83 and still living in the same spot on the southern edge of the lake in the heart of downtown Hanoi. "John McCain was lucky that See fjESCUER Page E4 Washington Post A free man: John Artis, showing a photo of himself as a teen, was 19 when he was arrested with Rubin "Hurricane" Carter in connection with three homicides, and 35 when he left prison in New Jersey. 3c.