On Dec. 7, Chesa Boudin won perhaps the most prestigious of all academic honors: a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford University in England. But he knew it might be days before his parents could congratulate him. In fact, they have missed out on all the highlights of his young life. "It's become normal for me," says the 22-year-old Yale senior. "They were not at my high school graduation. They weren't at my Little League games."

Since he was 14 months old, his mother, Katherine Boudin, 59, and his father, David Gilbert, 58, members of the '70s radical group the Weathermen, have been in prison for a 1981 armored-car robbery in which two police officers and a guard were murdered. Boudin has learned to accept his situation and to appreciate some of the good fortune in his life. "There are millions of children whose parents are in prison," he observes. "I've been lucky enough to have grown up in a stable, loving environment."

Stability isn't a word most would use to describe Boudin's early years. Born in 1980 in New York City, Chesa (the name, Swahili for "dancing feet," refers to his breech birth) spent his infancy on the lam. Katherine, daughter of civil rights attorney Leonard Boudin, had been wanted by the FBI since 1970, when a bomb factory Weathermen had built in a Greenwich Village townhouse exploded, killing three people. Just after Chesa's first birthday, both his parents were arrested for the deadly Brink's truck holdup in suburban Rockland County, N.Y. Katherine received 20 years to life (she was denied parole in August 2001) and Gilbert 75 years to life.

Relatives of the heist's victims label the couple terrorists but call the son an "innocent victim." Says John Han-char, 34, nephew of murdered cop Edward O'Grady: "We congratulate Chesa on his incredible achievement, but my cousins grew up without a father." Boudin says his parents were driven by idealism. "Neither of them intended for anyone to get hurt," he says. "None of us should be defined by our worst mistake."

Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, former Weathermen leaders, became Boudin's legal guardians. "We'd been close friends with his parents and grandparents, so we offered to take him in," says Ayers, 57, now a professor of education at the University of Illinois, Chicago. The couple moved Boudin to a 19th-century house in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood and raised him alongside their sons Zayd, now 25, a Boston playwright, and Malik, 22, a student at the University of California, San Diego. But Boudin's biological parents remained in the picture, writing to their son almost daily and embracing him every few months during prison visits. Boudin calls both women "Mom" and both men "Dad."

Nonetheless, the separation left painful scars. "I was angry as a kid," Boudin recalls. Throughout his childhood he was prone to violent outbursts. "He'd bang his head on the wall," says Dohrn, 60, now a clinical professor at Northwestern law school. "His tantrums could go on for days." He suffered from dyslexia as well, which kept him from reading until the third grade, and from a mild form of epilepsy, which further interfered with his schoolwork.

His new family never faltered in supporting him. Dohrn and Ayers hugged Boudin during his rages and enlisted a reading tutor and a psychiatrist. (The epilepsy disappeared on its own.) Remarkably, by the time he finished junior high at the private University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, Boudin had become a star student. "He made a decision that he was going to be not just regular but outstanding," says Dohrn.

At Yale Boudin has continued to excel. Like all his parents, he has been an activist, leading protests against a potential war in Iraq. Unlike them, he has forsworn the use of violence. "The historical moment we find ourselves in calls for very different approaches," he says. Majoring in history, he spent his junior year in Chile researching third-world poverty. Adds his Yale roommate Thomas Rigo, 22: "He's not embarrassed to stick his neck out and say 'This isn't right.' " He also has a lighter side. In addition to playing ultimate Frisbee, Boudin hosts a hip-hop radio show using his nickname "Raw Dog."

At Oxford Boudin will study international development issues. Before heading overseas, he hopes to complete work on a memoir about being the child of imprisoned parents. His family expects that effort too to be a success. "We're no longer surprised when he does amazing things," says Zayd Dohrn. "Chesa had a lot of obstacles to overcome, but he's focused on helping other people and changing the world."

J.D. Heyman
Diane Herbst in New Haven and Noah Isackson in Chicago