| Chapters 1, 2, 3 | Chapters 4, 5 | Chapters 6, 7 | Chapters 8, 9 |
Note: It is unclear whether the text below, replete with errors in punctuation, spelling, paragraphing and continuity, is a character-for-character duplication of the original court exhibit, or whether those errors were committed during the transcription process. I copied-and-pasted this manuscript (without corrections) from several consecutive web pages, beginning with Brief Background and Table of Contents. This manuscript is an exhibit in a civil lawsuit and therefore a public document.
Addicted to Hate: The Fred Phelps Story
Brief Background
Once upon a time some very nice people, Jon Michael Bell along with Joe Taschler and Steve Fry, decided to write a story about Fred Phelps.
On June 29, 1994 Jon Michael Bell, a former reporter hired to investigate Fred Phelps and Westboro Baptist Church by Stauffer Communications, Inc.,filed a lawsuit in Shawnee County District Court in Topeka, Kansas against Stauffer Communications alleging the Topeka Capital-Journal owed him compensation for overtime and to clarify ownership of his notes and work product. The work product in question, "Addicted to Hate" chronicling the life and times of Fred Phelps, was attached to the lawsuit as Exhibit A making it, therefore, a public document. Learning of the suit, members of Topeka's anti-Phelps underground delivered a certified copy of the lawsuit to a copy shop near the courthouse.
Addicted to Hate, as reproduced here, is the full contents from Addicted to Hate of Exhibit A of the lawsuit filed in Shawnee County District Court in Topeka, Kansas by Jon Michael Bell against Stauffer Communications in June of 1994, Case number 94CV766. It was transcribed into digital form during the course of the lawsuit by persons unknown, and distributed first as pamphlets and then over the internet.
Feel free to copy and distribute this important material. The authors claim no copyright. For additional background and details start with Cover and work your way forward.
Introduction and Cast of Characters
EXHIBIT A - ADDICTED TO HATE
By Jon Michael Bell with Joe Taschler and Steve Fry
(Note: The contents of the following document shows the time stamp of the Clerk of the District Court, Shawnee County, Kansas and shows that the document was filed at 1:05 p.m. on June 29, 1994.)
"And be sure your sin will find you out." (Num. 32:23)
A frequent quote of Pastor Fred Phelps
CAST OF CHARACTERS AND PHELPS FAMILY TREE
Reverend Fred Phelps: lawyer and Baptist minister; head of the Westboro Baptist Church; 64 years old. Disbarred.
Marge Phelps: wife of Fred; mother of his 13 children; 68 years old. WBC member.
1. Fred Phelps, Jr.: lawyer and employee at the Kansas Department of Corrections; 40 years old. Oldest son. WBC member.
Betty Phelps (Schurle): wife of Fred, Jr.; lawyer and owner-operator of a day-care home; 41 years old. WBC member.
2. ***Mark Phelps: businessman in Southern California; estranged from the family cult; 39 years old. 2nd son.
Luava Phelps (Sundgren): wife of Mark; childhood sweetheart; 36 years old.
3. ***Katherine Phelps: lawyer; suspended from the bar; living on welfare; 38 years-old; oldest daughter. Not in WBC.
4. Margie Phelps: lawyer and employee of the Kansas Department of Corrections; 37 years old; 2nd daughter. WBC member.
5. Shirley Phelps-Roper: lawyer at Phelps Chartered; 36 years old; 3rd daughter. WBC member.
Brent Roper: husband of Shirley; lawyer and businessman in Topeka; 30 years old; WBC member.
6. ***Nate Phelps: businessman in Southern California; estranged from family cult; 35 years old. 3rd son.
7. Jonathon Phelps: lawyer; 4th son; 34 years old; WBC member.
Paulette Phelps (Ossiander): wife of Jonathon; 33 years old; high school graduate; WBC member.
8. Rebekah Phelps-Davis: lawyer at Phelps Chartered; 32 years old; 4th daughter; WBC member.
Chris Davis: husband to Rebekah; 38 years old; raised from childhood in the WBC.
9. Elizabeth Phelps: lawyer at Phelps Chartered; night house manager staff at Sheltered Living, Inc. Topeka; 31 years old; 5th daughter; WBC member. Former counsel for the Shawnee County Sheriff's Department.
10. Timothy Phelps: lawyer and employee of the Shawnee County Department of Corrections; 30 years old; 5th son; WBC member.
Lee Ann Phelps (Brown): wife of Timothy; lawyer and employee of Shawnee County Sheriff's Department; 27 years old; WBC member.
11.***Dorotha Bird (Phelps): lawyer practicing independently in Topeka; 6th daughter; not a WBC member; changed her last name to avoid family's notoriety. 29 years old.
12. Rachel Phelps: lawyer at Phelps Chartered; YMCA fitness instructor; 28 years old; 7th daughter; WBC member.
13. Abigail Phelps: lawyer and employee at SRS-Youth and Adult Services, Juvenile Offender Program; 25 years old; 8th daughter; WBC member.
OTHERS
Fred Wade Phelps: the Rev. Phelps' father; he lived in Meridian, Mississippi. He was a railroad bull.
Catherine Idalette Phelps (Johnson): the Rev. Phelps' mother; she died when he was a small child.
Martha Jean Capron (Phelps): the Rev. Phelps' only sibling; a former missionary to Indonesia, she now lives in Pennsylvania; the brother and sister have not spoken for years.
***Denotes a Phelps child who has left the family cult.
(Note: The next portion of Exhibit A contains some handwritten notes denoting ages of the Phelps' children, some names of some of the non- Phelps WBC members (George Stutzman, Charles Hockenbarger, Jennifer Hockenbarger, and Charles Hockenbarger), names of some of the Phelps' grandchildren (Benjamin, Sharon, Sara, Libby, Jacob, Sam, and Josh), and 2 items pasted onto the document which are published documents showing the Phelps family tree and a map of the area surrounding Meridian, Mississippi.)
Preface
He rang the doorbell. It was winter, and with his thick gloves he could barely feel the button.
No answer.
He waited. A cat, caught like him on this cold night outside, walked along the porch rail. Toward him.
He watched it.
In the street behind them a solitary car passed. Like urban sleigh bells, the chains on its tires chimed rhythmic into the pounded street snow.
No one was home. The cat. Was rubbing against his leg.
He set the candy down and picked it up. It purred. And purred more when he tucked it under his warm arm. Like a football. Against his thick coat.
He could see into its eyes. Up close. He liked it that way.
When he wrapped his thick fingers round its tiny neck...
Pinning its legs against his side, he slowly squeezed, watching the eyes widen in alarm. Feeling it push against him. Desperately struggle. For a long time struggle.
Watching.
The lids droop slowly down. The light pass from the eyes.
He let go. Another car rattled metal links by in the snow.
Watching the light return. The animal terror that followed. Flooding the look in those helpless eyes. It pierced his soul.
A shock wave of remorse flamed hot. In all his cells he could feel it.
Guilt.
Or was it love. Yes, warm love for this tiny being.
But...
I want to do it.
Again. Now.
Yes, I want to know what it's like once more.
He squeezed the cat's thin neck. And when it has succumbed, he felt the same pity again warm flooding him.
And only horror at himself. As he did it once more.
And when it was over he...
But this time the cat mustered the last of its tiny animal ferocity and writhed free.
He felt...watching it streak away...he felt jarred awake somehow...as it ran from him...yes, he was awake now...
And terrified
Had anyone seen him? Would they know?
In a panic he ran
Home to his father's house...
Chapter One: Introductions All Around
A TIME magazine article from 1950 hangs framed on the wall. It's about a college student's crusade against necking on a campus in Southern California.
That student's office in Kansas today is aclack with fax machines and ringing phones, but the chair behind the great mahogany desk is empty.
When the former campus evangelist finally bursts in, he is trailed by grandchildren-so many sixth-grade secretaries-gophering, sending faxes, fetching papers-and a glass of water for the reporter.
Thoughtful. It's 93 outside.
"Sit down," says Fred Phelps, rumored ogre, with an effusive Southern graciousness. "But I got to tell you, you know we're going to preach the word, the same thing I've been preaching for 46 years, and it's supremely, supremely irrelevant to us what anybody thinks or says. "You get a little bit of this message I'm preaching, you can't ask for anything more. God hates fags-that's a synopsis."
Phelps, 63, a disbarred lawyer and Baptist preacher from Mississippi, is on a mission from God. His face lights up like a kid's on Christmas morning when he talks about how the nation is reacting to his anti- homosexual campaign. He contends the Bible supports the death penalty for sodomy:
"I'm not urging anybody to kill anybody," he adds, then matter-of-factly explains how his interpretation of the Bible calls for precisely that:
"The death penalty was violently carried out by God on a massive scale when the biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by fire and brimstone," says Phelps. "I am inclined to the view that the closer man's laws come to God's laws, the better off our race will be."
Phelps has found the national spotlight by disrupting the mourners' grieving at the funerals of AIDS victims. His followers carry picket signs outside the services with such stone-hearted messages as GOD HATES FAGS and FAGS=DEATH.
Last spring, he and his tiny band traveled to Washington, D.C., to taunt the gay parade, creating a near-riot. Since then, Phelps has been the subject of a 20-20 segment, appeared on the Jane Whitney Show twice to mock homosexuals, and is now regularly interviewed on both Christian and secular radio across America.
Fred Phelps, pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church in the Kansas capital of Topeka, since 1990 has also been an unsuccessful candidate for mayor, governor, and United States Senator. Currently he is negotiating his own radio show-one that will be heard throughout the Midwest.
His message is simple: God hates most everybody and He's sending them all to hell. Makes no difference how they lived their life.
For the Pastor Phelps, except for a handful of 'elect', the human race is composed of depraved beasts. God hates these creatures and so do His favored few. The world is divided sharply and irreversibly between the multitude of the already-damned (called the reprobate or the Adamic Race) and those chosen by God to attend Him in heaven. Those selected to be elect were tapped, not for the rectitude of their lives, but by what could best be described as the Supreme Whim of the Deity.
While this is the theology of predestination, one that in less vengeful minds is a mainstay of many Protestant sects, in Fred Phelps' mind it has become a green light to hatred and cruelty.
Recently, Pastor Phelps has added a corollary to this thesis that God hates the human race: God reserves His most pure and profound hatred for the homosexuals among the Adamic race.
At 63, Phelps is a triathlon competitor who bikes or runs every day. The strongest thing he drinks is what he calls his 'vitamin C cocktail', consisting of Vitamin C, Diet Pepsi, and water.
The pastor basks in the heat of the outrage triggered by his campaign against homosexuals.
"If you're preaching the truth of God, people are going to hate you," he grins. "Nobody has the right to think he's preaching the truth of God unless people hate him for it. All the prophets were treated that way."
Phelps delivers this with all the drama, fire, and brimstone of a man who used to be a trial lawyer and is still a preacher. His voice and tone are spellbinding and chilling. He doesn't stumble over his words. Clearly, he believes he is a modern day prophet.
Phelps says he and his family have been hated and persecuted almost from the time they arrived in Topeka in 1954. "The more opposition we get, the more committed we get," says Liz Phelps, one of the pastor's daughters. "Nothing, short of the elimination of homosexuality in the world, will make us stop," announces the pastor. In an unexpected reprieve from the anticipated 'sodomite' label pasted on all who disagree-especially the press-the former vacuum cleaner salesman gives his visitor a warm smile and immediately takes to calling him warmly by his first name. He leads a brief tour through his church. It adjoins his office: a long room, with a low ceiling and a rusty red carpet and dark, oaken pews. It has enough seating for twice the current congregation of 51.
The reporter asks to go to the bathroom. A stocky teenage grandson with training in judo is sent along. He waits outside, no dummy, for the reporter to finish. Then it's upstairs to the study, a high, spacious room filled with books of biblical exegesis dating back to the Reformation. Fred is eager to prove his Bible scholarship, and perhaps frustrated, even contemptuous, when he realizes he is talking to a Bible-ho-hum humanist. Downstairs, the pastor leads to the garage where their wardrobe of picket signs is kept. Stacked high against the walls are messages for every occasion-all of them gloomy. No good news here.
Outside, one would never guess they were at a church. Westboro Baptist is actually a large home in a comfortable Topeka neighborhood. In fact, Phelps and his wife have lived in the house for almost 40 years, and raised their 13 children within its walls. For many years, his law office was also located in the residence Fred Phelps insists is still his 'church'. The pastor's large family has always composed nearly all of his congregation and loyal following. As his children grew up, they bought the adjoining houses on the block, creating a tight compound around the church. Today, one finds a citadel of modest homes joined by fences, sharing a common backyard.
In a small revolution in urban design, the space behind their houses has not been sub-divided, but made into a wide grass park, complete with swimming pool, ball court, and trampoline. The grandchildren wander from their separate houses to play together. The effect on the nervous reprobates outside the walls is a sense of Waco in the air.
From his compound, like a knight sallying forth from the Crusaders' citadel of Krak, Pastor Phelps and his child band make war on the Adamic race. When not doing TV talk shows, radio interviews, or appearing on the cover of the national gay magazine, The Advocate, Phelps lays siege to his hometown, nearby Kansas City, and local universities.
The Westboro congregation pickets public officials, private businesses, and other churches, many of whom have had only tenuous connection to some form of anti-Phelps criticism. Until a city ordinance was passed against it, the Westboro warriors even picketed their opponents' homes. For the last two years, this tiny group, by virtue of their tactics, dedication, and discipline, have held the Kansas capital hostage. Fred Phelps has been able to intimidate most of the residents of Topeka into a fearful silence, though he himself is a shrill and vigorous defender of his own First Amendment rights. Those who would disagree with his brutal remedies to his perception of social ills face a three-fold attack:
Lawsuits: If the rest of America has justly come to fear the anonymous lone nut with a gun, it has yet to experience a community of eccentrics stockpiling law degrees.
Picketing: One prominent restaurant in Topeka is now failing after being picketed daily for almost a year. "Patrons just got tired of the harassment," sighs the owner. The cause of the pickets? One of the restaurant's employees is a lesbian.
Faxes: Phelps has gone to court and won on his right to fax daily almost 300 public officials, private offices, and the media with damaging and embarrassing information from the private lives of his opponents-most of it false, wild, and unsubstantiated. One city councilwoman was called a "Jezebelian, switch-hitting whore" who had sex with several men at once. A police officer saw his name faxed all over town as a child molester, one who had lured young boys to a park outside the city and had sex with them in his patrol car. Despite his daughter Margie's assertions that Phelps has the evidence to prove such accusations 'big time', no such proof has ever emerged.
Over the weeks, one learns about the family. Of Fred's 13 children, nine remain in the community. Five of them are married and raising 24 grandchildren. All of the members of Westboro Baptist-children, in-laws, and grandchildren- participate in the pastor's anti-gay campaign. Despite their image from the pickets, most of the adults are friendly and socially accomplished. Each of them has a law degree, and some have additional postgraduate degrees in business or public administration. The adults pay taxes, meet bills, and obey the laws. The grandchildren are perhaps less demonstrative than most children, but in an earlier day that was called well-behaved. Many of their parents hold or have held important jobs in local and state agencies. The pastor's first-born, Fred, Jr., and his wife, Betty, were guests at the Clinton inauguration. The former northeast Kansas campaign manager for Al Gore in 1988 has a stack of VIP photos, such as the one of him, Betty, Al and Tipper, and even soon-to- be Kansas governor Joan Finney smiling and yucking it up at the Phelps' place just a few years ago.
Clearly these are not streetcorner flakes taken to carrying signs. The only discordant note here is the Pastor Phelps, pacing about in his lycra shorts and windbreaker, looking like a triathlon competitor who made a wrong turn, ended in a bad neighborhood, and had his bike stolen. But he can easily be discounted while listening to his wife reveal just exactly how she managed to raise those thirteen kids. How? Well, for starters, the woman born Margie Simms of Carrollton, Missouri, had nine brothers and sisters herself.
Her own tribe she raised by the same five rules she grew up under: keep their faces clean, their hands clean, and their clothes clean; keep the house clean and keep 'em fed. No Game Boys, college funds, and cars on sixteenth birthdays. She did most of the cooking at first, and her grocery bill, she estimates, would be over two thousand a month today. Many of the 24 grandchildren still spend time at Gramp's house, she said, and their food costs are over a thousand a month, even now.
Mrs. Phelps smiles. Before the kids got old enough to be finicky, she could fill one tub and bathe them all, then line them up to brush their teeth and clean their fingernails. They had six bedrooms furnished with bunkbeds, and everyone wore hand-me-downs. Her laundry pile was so huge, she needed two washers and two dryers: "I'm afraid that Maytag repairman wasn't lonely with us. He was always out at our house. We went through washers and dryers every three years. They worked all day long. "The part I dreaded most about raising so many children? When they were sick. Then you had to pay all your attention to that one-and hope the others would make out all right." Later, she adds, the older kids took over most of the chores and her job became considerably easier.
The children used to listen to their father preach twice on Sunday, says daughter Margie. Once at eleven and again at seven that evening. "But there's too many conflicting schedules now. So we only have the one sermon at eleven-thirty," Margie tells how their household was abuzz with political bull sessions. All the candidates and wannabes came through there: "My dad was complete activity and whirlwind. My mom was the calm at the center of the storm. She's the one who inspired our closeness. Getting us to look out for our brothers and sisters; bond with each other." Mrs. Phelps describes how everyone had to take piano lessons. They had two pianos in the garage and three in the house. (Chopsticks in fugue-five as a backdrop to any childhood might explain why the adults seem so tense today.)
Margie tells of their family choir. How they practiced a cappella and harmony. Even today, their counter-protestors grudgingly admit the Phelps sound good when they raise their collective voice in hymn from across the street. Once for their father's birthday, says Margie, the children learned to harmonize "One Tin Soldier", the theme song from the film, "Billy Jack". She laughs at the memory. "He was of two minds about that: flattered that we'd done it. And not too pleased by the lyrics. ("...go ahead and hate your neighbor...go ahead and cheat a friend...do it in the name of heaven...you'll be justified in the end...") "We had good times...lots of good times," says Mrs. Phelps. "I would not have had any other childhood but that one," adds her daughter.
If they're not holding harassing signs saying, 'God Hates Fags', calling deaf old dowagers 'sodomite whores', or bristling at startled churchgoers, Fred's kids are back at home being model parents and neighbors, attending PTOs and Clinton coronations. The stark contrast of the two masks-decent and repulsive, hateful and considerate, forthright and devious, stupid and clever-creates a polarity that begins to weigh on the observer. Contrasts frequently are the visible edge of contradiction. And contradictions sometimes arise from very deep and secret undercurrents. Currents of pain. One day in the pickup with the pastor and his wife, driving the signs to the picket line, Fred suddenly jams on the brakes and pulls over.
"Why'd you do that?" asks the mother of 13. "We're gonna make sure those kids are safe," the pastor replies. The objects of his concern are in the yard across the street. There is absolutely no chance he could have hit them. It's odd and unnecessary and exaggerated behavior.
His wife knows it; even the children know it-they've pulled back and are watching the truck suspiciously. Mrs. Phelps gives her husband a strange look. As if she had some secret knowledge. It's obvious Fred intended this as an awkward display of altruism for the press. The message is: "The pastor loves kids". But the message one gets is a warning from Hamlet: "The play's the thing wherein we'll catch the conscience of the king." Because that boy, now a man, ran home to his father's house. The house of Fred Phelps. Where all good things end.
Where any family counselor will assert that a child who strangles pets has almost certainly been brutalized as well.
Chapter Two: Daddy's Hands
Mark Phelps feels nauseated whenever he remembers that night. He was hit over 60 times and his brother, Nate, over 200 with a mattock handle. Nate went into shock. Mark didn't. A boy who became a compulsive counter to handle the stress, Mark counted every stroke. His and Nate's. While their father screamed obscenities and his brother screamed in pain. Every 20 strokes, their mother wiped their faces off in the tub. Nate passed out anyway. That was Christmas Day.
Though he believes he should be the next governor of Kansas, Pastor Phelps has never believed in Christmas. A mattock is a pick-hoe using a wooden handle heavier than a bat. Fred swung it with both hands like a ballplayer and with all his might. "The first blow stunned your whole body," says Mark. "By the third blow, your backside was so tender, even the lightest strike was agonizing, but he'd still hit you like he wanted to put it over the fence. By 20, though, you'd have grown numb with pain. That was when my father would quit and start on my brother. Later, when the feeling had returned and it hurt worse than before, he'd do it again. "After 40 strokes, I was weak and nauseous and very pale. My body hurt terribly. Then it was Nate's turn. He got 40 each time. "I staggered to the bathtub where my mom was wetting a towel to swab my face. Behind me, I could hear the mattock and my brother was choking and moaning. He was crying and he wouldn't stop." The voice in the phone halts. After an awkward moment, clearing of throats, it continues: "Then I heard my father shouting my name. My mom was right there, but she wouldn't help me. It hurt so badly during the third beating that I kept wanting to drop so he would hit me in the head. I was hoping I'd be knocked out, or killed...anything to end the pain. "After that...it was waiting that was terrible. You didn't know if, when he was done with Nate, he'd hurt you again. I was shaking in a cold panic. Twenty-five years since it happened, and the same sick feeling in my stomach comes back now..." Did he? Come back to you?
"No. He just kept beating Nate. It went on and on and on. I remember the sharp sound of the blows and how finally my brother stopped screaming... "It was very quiet. All I could think of was would he do that to me now. I could see my brother lying there in shock, and I knew in a moment it would be my turn. "I can't describe the basic animal fear you have in your gut at a time like that. Where someone has complete power over you. And they're hurting you. And there is no escape. No way out. If your mom couldn't help you...I can't explain it to anyone except perhaps a survivor from a POW camp." Last year, Nate Phelps, sixth of Pastor Phelps' 13 children, accused his father of child abuse in the national media. The information was presented as a footnote to the larger story of Fred Phelps' anti-gay campaign. But the deep currents that lie beneath the apparent apple-cheeks of the Phelps' clan were stirring. A series of interviews with Nate resulted in an eyewitness account of life growing up in the Phelps camp. These reports contained allegations of persistent and poisonous child abuse, wife-beating, drug addiction, kidnapping, terrorism, wholesale tax fraud, and business fraud. In addition, Nate described the cult-like disassembly of young adult identities into shadow-souls, using physical and emotional coercion- coercion which may have been a leading factor in the suicide of an emotionally troubled teenage girl.
The second son, Mark Phelps, who according to his sisters was at one time heir to the throne of Fred, had refused comment during the earlier spate of news coverage. He and Nate have both left the Westboro congregation and now live within four blocks of each other on the West Coast. But, like the icy water that waits off sunny California beaches, the deepest currents sometimes rise and now Mark has surfaced with a decision.
"My father," says the 39 year-old, now a parent himself, "is addicted to hate. Why? I can't say. But I know he has to let it out. As rage. In doing so, he has violated the sacred trust of a parent and a pastor. "I'm not trying to hurt my father. And I'm not trying to save him. I'm going to tell what happened because I've decided it's the only way I can overcome my past: to drag it into the light and break its chains."
Mark believes that Fred Phelps, no longer able to hate and abuse his adult children if he hopes to keep them near, by necessity now must turn all his protean anger outward against his community. Mark has decided to tell the truth about his father so that others will be warned. He and his brother have now come forward with specific and detailed stories, alarming tales, ones that could be checked and have been verified. Mark's testimony supports Nate's previously, and both men's statements have been confirmed by a third Phelps' child. In addition, the Capital- Journal has uncovered documents which substantiate this testimony, and interviewed dozens of relevant witnesses who have confirmed much of this information. "One of my earliest memories...," the voice in the phone pauses, painful to remember: "was the big ol' German shepherd that belonged to our neighbors. One day it was in our yard and my father went out and blew it apart with his shotgun."
Mark says he has no memories prior to age five. "Living in that house was like being in a war zone, where things were unpredictable and things were very violent. And there was a person who was violent who did what he wanted to do. And that was to hurt people, or break things, or throw a fit, or whatever he wanted to do, that's what he did. And there was nobody there to say different."
One day when Mark was a teenager, he came home to find his mom sitting on the lip of the tub, blue towel on her head, her lips pursed with anger and hurt. "Do you know what your father did today?" she asked. To Mark, it felt surreal. His mother never spoke out nor vented her emotions. She seemed quite different just then.
He looked at his father. Pastor Phelps was standing across the room with his arms folded, smiling (the bathtub was in the parents' bedroom). "No," said Mark. "I don't know." His mother stood up and whipped the towel down her side. "He chopped my hair off," she announced, tears coming to her eyes. The son stood aghast at the grotesque head before him. His mother's former waist-length hair had been shorn to two inches- and even that showed ragged gouges down to the white of the scalp. "Why?" he asked. "Your father says I wasn't in subjection today," she replied. According to Mark and Nate, all of the Phelps children were terrified of their father: "Usually we had to worry what mood we'd find him in after school. You didn't make any noise or racket, or cut- up; you had to walk on eggshells, tiptoe around him; you didn't fight with your siblings; you did your jobs, performed your assigned tasks, and hoped not to draw his attention." If you did draw it and he was in a foul mood, say the boys, summary punishment at the hands of the dour pastor involved being beaten with fists, kicked in the stomach, or having one's arm twisted up and behind one's back till it nearly dislocated.
Sometimes Pastor Phelps preferred to grab one child by their little hands and haul them into the air. Then he would repeatedly smash his knee into their groin and stomach while walking across the room and laughing. The boys remember this happening to Nate when he was only seven, and to Margie and Kathy even after they were sexually developed teenagers. Nate recalls being taken into the church once where his father, a former golden gloves boxer, bent him backwards over a pew, body-punched him, spit in his face, and told him he hated him. Mark's very first memory in this life is an emotional scar: their mom had gone to the hospital to give birth to Jonathon. Mark remembers being very upset, since now they would be alone in the house with their father, his threatening presence left unmitigated by her maternal concern. Though only five, already Mark could use the phone and, one day while his father was out he dialed the number she'd left.
When he heard her voice, he told her, "Mom, I'm scared. I need you." But before she could respond, the Pastor Phelps came on. He had gone to visit the new mother. "What the hell are you doing calling here?" the father shouted into the phone. "Don't you ever call here and bother her again!" That is Mark Phelps' earliest memory. That, and the feeling, when his father hung up, that there would be no rescue and no escape from the fear and pain contained in the word, 'daddy'. When Fred Phelps came home, he beat the little boy's first memory of the world in to stay. From that moment, Mark whispers softly in the phone, "I resolved to be a total yes-man to my father. If I couldn't escape his violence, then I'd get so close to him he wouldn't see me. I'd survive that way."
"We had clothes and food," adds Nate. "What we didn't have was safety. He could throw fits and rages at any moment. When he did, the kids would respond by turning pale and shaking, standing there shivering and listening-Mark would pace and count the squares in the floor." "But I learned exactly what I had to do...to stay safe around him," continues Mark. I did a good job of it." He admits he used to beat his brothers and sisters if his father ordered him: "If you fell asleep in church, you got hit in the face. Once I hit Nate so hard, it knocked over the pew and blood splurt across the floor." After a moment, he tells us quietly: "My brothers and sisters are entitled to hate me."
Physical abuse? Nonsense, say sisters Margie and Shirley. They laugh.
Well, maybe during their father's period of preoccupation with health food. Every morning they were required to eat nuts and vitamins, curds and whey. "I hate nuts," says Margie "We'd take the vitamins and drop them in our pockets. Throw them out later." She adds: "Little Abby was the only one who liked curds and whey. Poor kid. She'd have to eat every bowl on the table when my dad wasn't looking."
Against this charming story is set another. For all her reputation as a minotaur of the Kansas courtrooms, Margie Phelps was like a second mom to the younger children. Today, she remains well-liked by her siblings, including Mark and Nate. When her father was beating someone and screaming at the top of his lungs, frequently Margie would take her terrified younger brothers and sisters away for several hours. When they thought it was over, they'd come back like cautious house cats, sneaking in softly, Margie on point, to see if the coast was clear. The boys tell how one day their father was in a barbershop and noticed the leather strap used to sharpen razors. It struck his fancy as a backup to the mattock handle, so he had one custom-made at a leatherworker's shop near Lane and Huntoon.
"It was about two feet long and four inches wide. It left oval circles- red, yellow, and blue," says Mark. "Usually the circles would be where it would snap the tip-on the outside of your right leg and hip...because he was righthanded." According to Mark and Nate, their father wore out several of the leathermaker's straps while they were growing up. As Mark Phelps became the angel-appointed in Fred's family cult, Nate was assigned the role of sinner. For Mark, his brother was the needed scapegoat. For the rest of the family, Nate was a problem child, the delinquent of the brood. Brilliant like his dad (Nate's IQ has been measured at 150), the middle son followed another drummer from the time he was a toddler. When he was five, he remembers his father telling him, 'I'm going to keep a special eye on you'. The regular beatings started shortly thereafter.
Nate endured literally hundreds of such brutalities before walking out at one minute after midnight on his eighteenth birthday. His siblings both inside and outside the church agree that Nate got the lion's share of the 'discipline'. "Nate was a very tough kid," says Mark. "I don't know how he endured it, but he did. He'd get 40 blows at a time from the mattock handle. He was just tougher than the rest of us and my father adjusted for that."
Today, raising his family in California, Nate is a devout Christian and a warm, friendly, considerate, mountain of a man. But at 6'4" and 280 pounds, it would be...instructive...to see father and son in the same room today with one mattock stick between them. "I sensed early on this man had no love for us," says Nate. "He was using us. I knew it. And I always made sure he knew I did."
In fact, Mark adds, Nate's obstinate resistance so angered his father that, by age nine, when a family outing had been planned, frequently Nate not only missed it, but Fred would remain behind with him. "And during the course of the day, my father would beat Nate whenever the spirit moved him." Mark remembers the family coming back once to find Pastor Phelps jogging around the dining room table, beating the sobbing boy with a broom handle; while doing so, he was alternately spitting on the frightened child and chuckling the same sinecure laugh so disturbing to those who've seen him on television. When he wasn't allowed to go along, says Mark, "Nate would literally scream and chase mom as she drove off with us kids in the car. He knew what was coming after we left."
The older brother remembers the little one racing alongside the windows, begging for them not to leave him until, like a dog, he could no longer keep up. Mark sorrowfully admits he felt no empathy for him, only relief it wasn't happening to himself. "I just stared straight ahead. I didn't know what he was yelling about. I was just glad to get the hell out of there." But how could their mom tolerate that? Wouldn't the maternal instinct cut in at some point? Wouldn't the lioness turn in fury to protect her cub?
It turns out Mrs. Phelps was herself an abused child, according to her sons. "The only thing she ever told us about her dad was that he was a drunkard who beat them. She said she'd always run and hide in the watermelon patch when he was raging." Though most of her nine brothers and sisters either settled in Kansas City or remained in rural Missouri, Mrs. Phelps has had virtually no contact with them during the last 40 years. Not since she married Fred. "My father was very effective at jamming Bible verses down her throat about wives being in subjection to their husbands," Nate says. "She was a small woman and very gentle. She felt God had put her with Fred and she had to endure." "Oh, mom would try to interfere," adds Mark. "She'd come running out, finally, into the church auditorium as the beating would escalate, and yell wildly, 'Fred, stop it!" You're going to kill him!' "And then my father would turn on her. I remember him screaming, 'Oh, so you want me to just let them go, huh? You don't believe in discipline, huh? Why don't you just shut your goddam mouth before I slap you? Get your fat hussy ass out of here! I'm warning you, goddamit, you either shut up or I'm going to beat you!'
"And then," Mark continues, "she'd shut up till she couldn't take it anymore, then she'd start again. When she did, he'd start beating her and hitting her with his fist, and sometimes she'd just come up and grab him. Sometimes she'd run out the front door, and sometimes he'd just slap her and beat her until she'd shut up. "I can remember times when she'd get hit so hard, it looked like she'd be knocked out, and she'd stagger and almost fall. She would give out this desperate scream right at the moment when he would hit her.
"Sometimes, after he'd get done beating her, he'd have forgotten about the kid. Sometimes he'd go back to the kids and beat even harder. Then he'd blame the kid for what had happened." The phone line falls silent. "Out in public," recalls Nate, "she wore sunglasses a lot." Mrs. Phelps was beaten even when she wasn't interfering. After Nate and Kathy, the boys figure their mom was victimized the most. They remember their father finishing one session by throwing her down the stairs from the second floor. "It had 16 steps," says Mark. "And no rail," continues Nate. "Mom grabbed at the stairs going over and tore the ligaments and cartilage in her right shoulder. The doctor said she needed surgery, but my father refused. We had no medical insurance back then. She's had a bad shoulder ever since. My father often chose that same shoulder to re-injure when he was beating mom. He'd grab her right arm and jerk it. She'd yelp." The voice in the phone sighs: "But...I guess I do still feel that very deeply...that she betrayed a gut, primitive bond when she drove off and left me. I do love my mom. But I wish she'd put a stop to it. She could have and she didn't." Pastor Phelps denies beating his children or his wife. "Hardly a word of truth to that stuff. You know, it's amazing to me that even one of them stayed." He grins, referring to the nine daughters and sons who remain loyal to him. Why?
"Because teachers have the kids from age five. And children are besieged by their own lusts and foreign ideas. "Those boys (Mark and Nate) didn't want to stay in this church. It was too hard. They took up with girls they liked, and the last thing them girls was gonna do was come into this church. "Those boys wanted to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season. I can't blame them. I just feel sorry for them that they're not bound for the promised land." Margie is the second-oldest daughter and the fourth Phelps child. Her mom goes by 'Marge", so she is 'Margie'. Some say Margie is the de facto head of operations for her father's war on the community. Anticipating bad reviews from Nate, at least, she explained: "My brother is furious with his father because he (Nate) is married to another man's wife. My dad and our whole family do not accept that."
On the abuse issue, her denials take a softer tone: "There were times in our childhood when each of us had bruises on our behinds. My dad had a capacity to go too far. In what he said even more than what he did...yet, as obnoxious as he can be one minute, he's the most kind, caring person another minute. "I have a marvellous relationship with my father as an adult. He respects me. He listens to me. And he helps me. Most people, when they get older, they don't have that kind of relationship with their parents." Margie, as a single woman, adopted a new-born infant boy nine years ago. "Jacob doesn't have a father," she says, "and my dad fills in there. He's one of Jacob's best friends. He's just a wonderful grandfather to him." For his part, Nate remembers Marge bringing home bad grades one day and going running to avoid a beating. When she got back, she was in an exhausted state. Fred beat her anyway. So badly, she lost consciousness and lay in a heap on the floor.
The Pastor Phelps kicked his daughter repeatedly in the head and stomach while she out. "I saw her interviewed on television," adds Nate. "And she said we weren't abused, just strictly brought up." He was concerned when he heard her say that: "If she remembers that as a 'strict upbringing', then there's no moral suasion there for her not to 'strictly bring up' her own child, the adopted Jacob. "Nate would have ended in the penitentiary without his father's discipline," says his mother. "I believe it's him who's the bitter one. He needed a lot of discipline." That's fair. All large families have a black sheep. But this one has four: Nate and Mark rebelled, accepting they'd be turned back from the gates of heaven by their father who was acting as St. Peter's proxy. They later received an official letter from the Westboro Baptist Church, informing them they had been 'voted out of the church and delivered to Satan for the destruction of the flesh'. Katherine and Dottie suffered the same fate but continue to reside in Topeka. "Dottie only cares about her career," says her mom. "Family is an embarrassment." And Kathy? "She's been a bitch since high school," says Margie.
"Mark," reflects Mrs. Phelps, "was always well-behaved. Of the ones who left, he was a surprise." According to Mark and Nate, fathering to Pastor Phelps meant the rod and the pulpit. "My dad never once stood with me, or sat with me, or worked with me to teach me anything about the practical life of a Christian," says Mark. "It was just preach on Sunday. There was no focus on the human heart or being a human-you know, how we were supposed to do that."
When it came to their formal education as well, Fred's input to the curriculum was limited to the rod and the wrath of God. "Our dad had no use for education. He wanted us all to be lawyers, and for that we needed good grades. But he would sneer at our subjects, never helped us with our homework, never went to any school meetings and skipped our graduations. All he cared about were the grades. On the day they arrived, that was the one day he got involved in our education-usually with the mattock." "The only time he met our teachers," adds Nate, "was when he was suing them ." Mark remembers a day when the boys had gathered in one room to do their homework. They'd been working quietly for some time when the dour pastor walked in.
After staring in simmering malevolence at each of them, he intoned: "You guys think you may be foolin' me. But on a cold snowy day, the snow will be crunchin' under the mailman's tires, and under his boots, when he puts that letter in our box. Your grades. And that's when the meat's gonna get separated from the coconut..." When the report cards arrived from Landon Middle School one day in January, 1972, it wasn't snowing. But Jonathon and Nate's grades were poor and the meat got separated from the coconut. The beatings were so severe, the boys were covered with massive, broken, purple bruising extending from their buttocks to below their knees. Neither Jonathon or Nate were able to sit down, and the blows to the backs of their legs had caused so much swelling they were unable to bend them.
Today, Nate has chronic knee complaints whose origin may lie in early trauma to the cartilage. And after the beatings came the shaming. It was 1972-the age of shoulder locks. Both boys had begged their father not to have crewcuts. They already felt exposed to enough ridicule as the odd ducks whose father didn't believe in Christmas, whose home no one was allowed to visit, and who were forbidden to visit others' homes. Jonathon and Nate had a teenage dread of braving the corridors with flesh-heads in an era of long manes, and their father had relented. Their hair had been allowed to touch their collars. But when the grades turned bad, out came the clippers. No attachments. Brutally short. Shaved bald. "It was not a haircut," says Nate. "It was a penalty. And a further way of cutting us off from the outside world."
On the following day-a Thursday-the boys came to school wearing red stocking caps. When asked to remove them in class, they declined. This upset their teachers almost as much as their refusal to take their seats. One instructor demanded Nate remove his headgear. Finally, Nate did. The teacher stared at his bald head. So did his classmates. "On second thought," said the charitable man, "put it back on."
For gym class that Friday, the boys had a note from their mom excusing them all week. By now, the faculty had a pretty good idea what the clothes, notes, and funny hats were covering, and Principal Dittemore asked Jonathon to come into his office. Waiting for him were the school nurse and a doctor from the community.
They asked the 13 year-old to show them his bruises. He refused. Feeling their hands were tied, the staff released Jonathon, only to have the pastor himself show up a few hours later. During a stormy second meeting, Phelps accused the school, first of slackness and poor discipline, then, paradoxically, of beating his sons and causing the bruising themselves. He threatened to slap a lawsuit on anyone who pursued the matter.
Not a man to be intimidated, Dittemore reported the suspected child abuse to an officer of the Juvenile Court. On Monday, the same routine occurred-unable to sit down and insisting on the stocking caps. Until it came time for gym once more. The note had excused them for a week, but now the coach demanded they show it again, saying he'd thought it was only for a day. The boys had left their note at home.
The coach took Nate into the locker room and stood there, waiting for him to get undressed. Nate refused. At that point, the faculty relented, and Jonathon and Nate thought they were off the hook. But, as they walked out of Landon to their mom's station wagon after school, they saw two police cars waiting. One of the teachers pointed the boys out to the officers. Before he knew it, Nate was in a squad car on his way downtown. "I was terrified. Not because I was afraid of the police. I was afraid of my dad. I kept thinking it was all over but the funeral. What would my old man do? This was my fault and he was going to beat the daylight out of me and I could still barely walk from the last one." At the station, Nate remembers everyone was very kind to him. They spent an enormous amount of time and energy trying to allay his fears and coax him to allow them to photograph his naked backside. Finally he did. When the police allowed Mrs. Phelps to take her boys home, Nate's worst nightmare came true. After nearly getting arrested for delivering a tirade of obscenities and threats to the juvenile detectives, the dour pastor rushed back to the house and delivered a fresh beating to his exhausted sons.
For the moment, however, it had gone beyond the pastor's control. Police detectives investigated the matter, and it was filed as juvenile abuse cases #13119 and #13120. Jonathon and Nate were assigned a court- appointed lawyer, as a guardian-ad-litem, to protect their interests. The assistant county attorney took charge of the cases, and juvenile officers were assigned to the boys.
In his motion to dismiss, the ever-resourceful Phelps filed a pontifically sobering sermon on the value of strict discipline and corporal punishment in a good Christian upbringing. "When he beat us, he told us if it became a legal case, we'd pay hell," says Nate. "And we believed him. At that time, there was nothing we wanted to see more than those charges dropped. When the guardian ad litem came to interview us, we lied through our teeth."
Principals involved in the case speculate the boys' statements, along with superiors' reluctance to tangle with the litigious pastor, caused the charges to be dropped. The last reason is not academic speculation. The Capital-Journal has learned through several sources that the Topeka Police Department's attitude toward the Phelps' family in the '70s and '80s was hands off-this guy's more trouble than it's worth'.
Three months later, the case was dismissed upon the motion of the state. The reason given by the prosecutor was "no case sufficient to go to trial in opinion of state". The boys were selling candy in Highland Park when they learned from their mom during a rest break the Pastor Phelps would not go on trial for beating his children. "I felt elated," remembers Nate. "It meant at least I wouldn't get beaten for that."
But if Nate's life was so full of pain and fear, why didn't he speak up when he was at the police station and everyone was being so nice to him? Nate laughs. It's the veteran's tolerant amusement at the novice's question. "We'll do anything not to have to give up our parents," he answers. "That's just the way kids are. That's the way we were." "Besides, when it (abuse) occurs since birth, it never even crosses your mind to fight back," interrupts Mark. "You know how they train elephants?
They raise them tied to a chain in the ground. Later, it's replaced by a rope and a stick. But the elephant never stops thinking it's a chain." The loyal Phelps family are of two minds on the case. Margie admitted it had occurred. Jonathon denied it. The pastor never decided. Instead, he launched into a lecture on the value of tough love in raising good Christians.
Since their juvenile files were destroyed when the boys reached eighteen, but for their father's vindictiveness, there might have been no record of this case. As it was, he sued the school. This caused the school's insurance company to request a statement from Principal Dittemore, who complied, describing the events which led to the faculty's concern the boys were being abused. The suit was dropped.
When contacted in retirement, Dittemore confirmed he'd written the letter and acknowledged its contents. The family now accuses Nate of fabricating his stories of child abuse. They claim he is spinning these lies out of the malice he has over their opposition to his marriage (Nate's wife is divorced). But Nate was married in 1986. The described case of abuse was a matter of record 14 years earlier-and 21 years prior to Pastor Phelps' controversial debut on national television. The Phelps family has since maintained that, while the case did exist, the charges were invented by the school to harass their family.
They say they were raised under loving but strict discipline, and that is how they're raising their children. Jonathon Phelps, who admits he beats his wife and four children, for emphasis reads from Proverbs, 13:24: "He that spareth his rod, hateth his son. But he that loveth him, chasteneth him betimes." Yes...but...where does it say the purple child is a child much-loved? Betty Phelps, wife of Fred, Jr., glowers at the questions. Anytime you spank a child, you're going to cause bruising, she explains. And sneers: "I'll bet your parents put a pillow in your pants." Jonathon, staring straight ahead and not looking at the reporter, states in a barely controlled voice of malevolent threat that, should the reporter tell it differently than just heard, said scribbler is evil and going to hell. Assuming there'll be space, the doomed dromedary of capital muckraking must tell it differently.
To begin with, the reporters on this story were raised in the same era and locale as the Phelps boys. They also grew up under strict discipline, and one of their fathers was, at one time, a professional boxer. Daddy's hands sometimes swung a mean leather belt, but only a few strokes, and it left no bruises. After a few minutes, one could sit down again. The moving force behind the pastor's hands was not 'tough love', as he so often claims, but malice aforethought. The Capital- Journal has established from numerous sources conversant with the case that the injuries to Nate and Jonathon Phelps in January of 1972 went far beyond the bounds of a 'strict upbringing'-even by the standards of the strictest disciplinarian. Those injuries would have been seen as torture and abuse in any era, at any age, in any culture.
Mark's front porch tale is instructive. Any psychologist hearing the story about choking that cat today would know immediately to investigate the child's home life for abuse. Back then it was not the case. That child would have been left to find his own way out of the terrible subterranean world another had made for him. Most don't. Research shows nine out of twelve die down there.
In their heart. When the light in their soul goes out. If their bodies live on, they grow up mangled and mangle those closest to them. And it all takes shape down there. In the dark new universe of a young child's mind. Mark Phelps escaped.
His father did not. That man came to the Kansas capital instead. And, after 40 years, he still haunts its porches, tormenting its innocents. The Capital-Journal went south...Mississippi...to see if it could learn where and when...perhaps how...the light went out for Fred Phelps.
It followed him to Colorado and California, Canada and New Mexico. For three months, it turned every stone in Topeka, seeking the truth about this man. What follows is the monster behind the clown, the streetcorner malevolence mocking the cameras.
Chapter Three: God's Left Hook
The air hangs heavy, torpid, and hot. Pulling the warm steam into one's lungs leaves only a disturbing sense of slow suffocation. Under the harsh subtropic sun, the magnolia blossoms slip from the black-green leaves, falling like wet snow-petals to perfume the red-clay earth. In the heat, it leaves a heavy, hanging smell...the wealth of Dixie. Fred Phelps spent his first years here.
Outside the courthouse, flags sag limp and breezeless. Above the doors are cut the words: Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness Against Thy Neighbor It's Meridian, Mississippi, town of old store fronts, mouthwatering cornbread, and 40,000 people. Surrounded by 100-foot pine forests, its business is lumber. Trucks and flatbed railcars loaded with freshly cut logs rolls slowly by. To the sensual fragrance of the magnolias is added the sweet aroma of pine. While great pyramids of logs await processing into lumber at the plant on the west side, Navy jets roar overhead...the other source of revenue. The federal government threatens to close the base down; the locals fight to keep it. Meridian was sacked by General Sheridan during the Civil War. The implacable bluecoat burned the town and tore up what, till then, had been a rail hub of the South. The town has since recovered. The railroad did not. In the cemeteries can be found gravestones of the Confederate dead. Among them, a more recent marker reads: Catherine Idalette Phelps, Age 28 Fred's mother used to open all the windows in the house and play the piano, according to Thetis Grace Hudson, former librarian in Meridian and a neighbor of the Phelps family during the Depression. The other households on her street were too poor to afford any entertainment, she says, so everyone remembered Catherine Phelps for her kindness.
Apparently she played well. Whenever she was at their house, Hudson remembers she used to ask Mrs. Phelps to play the hymn "Love Lifted Me" on the piano. Fred's mother always obliged, even if she was busy. But, after an illness of several months-those who still remember the family say it was throat cancer-Catherine Phelps died on September 3, 1935. Fred was only five years old. Since the little boy's uncle was the mayor of nearby Pascagoula, and his father was prominent in Meridian, the honorary pallbearers at her funeral included the local mayor, a city councilman, two judges, and every member of the police department. Ms. Hudson says young Fred was bewildered at the loss. After his mother's death, a maternal great aunt, Irene Jordan, helped care for Fred and his younger sister, Martha Jean. "She kept house for the daddy," adds a distant relative who declined to be identified. At times, work caused the boy's father to be away from home and Jordan raised the children. The woman Fred Phelps has referred to as 'his dear old aunt' died in a head-on collision in 1951 as she was driving back to Meridian from a nearby town. The boy had lost two mothers before he'd turned 21.
Family friends remember Fred's father was a tall, stately man. A true Southern gentlemen, they say. And a fine Christian. But the elder Phelps also had a hot temper, according to Jack Webb, 81, of Porterville, Miss. Webb owns a general store, the only business in Porterville, a town of about 45 elderly people. "If he got mad, he was mad all over," said Webb. He was ready to fight right quick. He was mad, mad, mad." Webb is a frail man, slightly hard of hearing. Walking into his general store is like stepping back into the 19th century. The shelves, all located behind a 100-foot wooden counter, are stocked with weary tins of Vienna sausage and dusty bottles of aspirin. Coke goes for 30 cents. Glass. No twist-off.
Despite the temper, Webb adds, the elder Phelps was an honorable man. In Meridian, he had been an object of great respect. Fred's father was a veteran of World War One, and throughout his life suffered from the effects of a mustard gassing he'd taken in France. He found work as a detective for the Southern Railroad to support his family. The railroad security force or "bulls", as they were called, had a reputation for brutality when they patrolled the yards to prevent the itinerant laborers, washed out of their hometowns by the Depression, from riding the freights. "My father," says Pastor Phelps, "oft-times came home with blood all over him." Suddenly he stands up, turning his face away, and exits. Several minutes later he returns, smiling, apologizing: "You got me thinking about those days," he offers, then bravely charges into a round of the town's official song: "Meridian, Meridian... a city set upon a hill; Meridian, Meridian... that radiates the South's good will."
The elder Phelps was a "bull" throughout the Depression, says Thetis Hudson, and the pay was good. The family lived comfortably at a time when the other families in town were being ravaged by hardship. What was the son like? "Fred Phelps had as normal and beautiful a home life as anyone ever wanted," commented a relative who didn't want their name used. "His childhood was very good," says Hudson. "There was nothing in his family out of the ordinary." "All I know is it's a tragedy, and it stems from within Fred Phelps," adds the anonymous relative, referring to the homosexual picketing. "It has nothing to do with his upbringing."
As a teenager. Fred was tall and thin and sported a crewcut. He was extraordinarily smart, but thought to be a bit overbearing about it at times. A reserved and serious high school student, he never dated anyone while there. "He was not a real socializer, but he knew a lot of people. Everyone had the greatest respect for him," says Joe Clay Hamilton, former high-school classmate, now a Meridian lawyer. The future Pastor Phelps earned the rank of Eagle Scout with Palms, played coronet and base horn in the high school band, was a high hurdler on the track team, and worked as a reporter on the school's newspaper. In a class of 213 graduates, he ranked sixth. When he was voted class orator for commencement of May, 1946, received the American Legion Award for courage, leadership, scholarship, and service, then honored as his congressman's choice for West Point, Fred Phelps was only 16 years old.
A year later this young man, touted as the quiet achiever, had turned his back on West Point, his former life, and his future promise. The summer of '47 would find him a belligerent and eccentric zealot, antagonizing the Mormons in the mountains of Utah. Because of his age, Phelps had to wait one fateful year before entering the military academy. During that time he attended the local junior college. While waiting for his life to start, Fred, along with his best friend, John Capron, went to a revival meeting at the local Methodist church. It was there the budding pastor felt the 'call', and the dreams of going north to West Point melted like the river ice washed down and marooned on the hot mud of the Mississippi banks.
Fred Phelps, by his own description, "went to a little Methodist revival meeting and had what I think was an experience of grace, they call it down there. I felt the call, as they say, and it was powerful. The God of glory appeared. It doesn't mean a vision or anything, but it means an impulse on the heart, as the old preachers say." The revival had a profound effect on both Phelps and Capron. "The two of them 'got religion'," said Joe Hamilton. Friends and relatives claim the two boys became so excited, they were unable to distinguish reality from idealism-they were going off to conquer the world. One relative still in Meridian described it this way: "Fred, bless his heart, just went overboard. If you didn't accept it, he was going to cram it down your throat."
Was this radical change in behavior a characteristic of the conversion experience? Or was there something hidden in the young man's character that drew him to the experience and its consequent license for loud and abusive behavior? If the latter, then some heart should be heard pounding beneath the floorboards in the old Phelps' house. Yet, there is little to be heard.
Fletcher Rosenbaum, a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force who lives in Meridian, went to high school with Phelps. "He was good at whatever he tried," Rosenbaum says. "He was a first-class individual. I would be surprised if he wasn't a top-notch citizen in Topeka." Picketing AIDS funerals and the fax attacks on members of his community by Phelps surprised Rosenbaum: "He was very reserved in high school. Very quiet. I'm surprised he would be involved in aggressive activities. To me, it would be out of character for him." This observation may not be entirely accurate. One woman, a librarian at the Meridian Public Library, said she remembers Phelps and went to school and church with him. "He doesn't bend," she observed. "He never did." She also described him as "spooky", "different", and "a preacher prodigy." "You tell him not to do it, and he'll do it," said another Meridian woman. "He was a very determined person. That's to be admired, but it can be taken too far."
Even Fred himself remembers differently. He was a boxer throughout high school and, reminiscing briefly about his days in Meridian, he chuckles to himself. If any of the other boys came to class with a puffy face or shiner, their friends would ask if they'd been sparring with Phelps. He always left his mark on them, he tells me proudly.
Sid Curtis, a grade-school classmate of Fred's, remembers the future pastor drew well, even then. What did he draw? Boxers.
A golden glove contender in high school, Fred fought twice in state meets, winning matches which, according to him, were head-on slugfests. Not aggressive? Not the Bull of Topeka yet, but clearly it was in his character. A story in the high-school paper, predicting the futures of Phelps and his classmates, reads: "Fred Phelps will box in Madison Square Garden next June, 1954. Young Phelps will fight for the world championship." One can only wonder what deep currents rose in the teenager whenever he climbed into the ring. Recalling the earlier testimony of his sons, Nate and Mark, and remembering that research has proven abusive behavior is passed with high probability from one generation to the next, the question must be raised: Was the Pastor Phelps equally abused as a child?
In the South, there is an unwritten code you don't bad-mouth one of your own. Strangers are welcome unless they ask too many questions, or speak ill of Southern folks and ways. In fact, if ET had come down in Meridian instead of Southern California, and a yankee inquired about that today, folks would probably scratch their chins, figure the carpet-baggers with a knowing eye, and say he was a quiet boy, little short for his age...but had good hands for the piano...
If the stories his sons have told are true, the outside observer has two choices in understanding Fred Phelps: either there's a pounding heart under the floor in that old house or the teenager's Saul- into-Paul experience produced the character change. However, many Christians might find it difficult to believe that discovering Jesus would render a good-natured, quiet lad into the bullying hostile whose trail we will shortly follow from Vernal, Utah to Topeka, Kansas. If something did happen to throw Fred Waldron Phelps off track, something that mangled him for life, no one in Meridian wanted to say. Doing that no doubt would be to speak ill of the dead-something Pastor Phelps also was taught to avoid.
Yet, suddenly at 16, the child has become the man: fanatic, unempathic, combative, and vindictive. If there is an answer to the question, 'why does Fred hate us all so much?', perhaps it lies in those years, age five to 15, when his father was largely absent and Fred and his sister were cared for by Irene Jordan.
"If he were dead, I'd talk," says Fred's sister, Martha Jean Capron, now residing in Pennsylvania. "But as long as he's alive...that's up to him..." Following the revival experience, Phelps abandoned plans for West Point. He moved to Cleveland, Tennessee, where he attended Bob Jones College, a non-denominational Christian academy.
John Capron went with him. While Fred and his boyhood chum would eventually separate over religion, Martha Jean and Capron never would: they were married and moved to Indonesia as missionaries. John was a minister there for ten years. Later he would smuggle Bibles into Communist China. Pastor Phelps' brother-in-law died of a heart attack in 1982.
Perhaps it's a shame Phelps didn't go to West Point. An army career could have provided a healthy outlet for his aggression, been more compatible with his demanding and commanding nature, while his strong body, mind, and will would have been an asset to the service and his country. If he'd survived Korea as a 2nd lieutenant, probably he'd have been a lieutenant colonel by Vietnam. There he'd almost certainly have chipped his Manichaean mandibles of dualism on that war's hard bone of moral ambiguity. Either he'd have ended on a river somewhere, whispering "the horror...the horror..." to bewildered junior officers, or gained a wider horizon and returned home to retire an urbane cynic and Southern gentleman. But in 1946, Fred Phelps had a year to kill instead of Nazis or North Koreans. The revival took him from Meridian to Bob Jones; from there the future pastor found another outlet for his anger. This one gave instant gratification and conferred adult license to abuse almost overnight: lip-shooting preacher; revivalist minister. And, unlike Vietnam, here God was unequivocally on his side...
As part of a Rocky Mountain mission assignment in summer, 1947, Phelps and two other students from Bob Jones were to seek out a fundamentalist church, convert non-believers to Christianity and steer the converts to that church. The three men chose Vernal, a town in northeast Utah. They would be working to convert, not secular hedonists, but a population that was predominantly and staunchly Mormon. When Fred and his friends got there, they set up a meeting tent brought from Bob Jones in the city park. A local Baptist minister provided them food and lodging (B.H. McAlister, who would later ordain Phelps). During the day the do-it- yourself apostles went door-to-door, seeking converts to the good news. At night, they conducted revival meetings in the tent. Only no one came.
So Ed Nelson, one of the trio, had an idea. He went to a local radio station and asked if he might buy a block of time. Nope, was the reply. Not if you're going to attack the Mormon church. Ok, said Ed, can I announce I'll be giving an address tonight at the tent?
Sure. So Ed Nelson announced on the radio he'd be doing just that. And the title of the speech? 'What's Wrong with the Mormon Church?' says Ed, over the air. That night, continues Nelson, now 69 and a traveling Baptist evangelist based in Denver, a huge crowd arrived. It was so large, the trip had to roll up the sides of the tent. Ed was nervous, but he gave his speech. The crowd listened politely. When the young evangelist was finished, a man in the crowd asked would there be questions. Sure, said Ed.
But the very first one stumped him, Nelson confesses disarmingly, and he panicked. Flustered, he announced there would be no more questions. Several in the throng protested, saying that, after sitting in courtesy, listening to their religion attacked, they weren't going to let the young men off so easily-that they should be willing to answer the crowd's questions.
At that, Fred rushed one of the men speaking and started to throw a punch, but Ed grabbed his arm and shouted: "Fred! Fred! No! Don't you do it!" "And," Nelson recounts, "Fred looked at that guy and he said, 'you shut your mouth, you dirty...' something or other."
Which, to Ed, only compounded their troubles. Fred's companion then raised his arms and shouted, "Folks, the meeting's over! It's over!" And he rushed out and killed the lights inside the tent. This discouraged any further theological discussion.
It would seem this format-speak one's mind, then take violent offense at anything less than complete agreement, and suppress all opposing views by any means handy-was the major life lesson learned by Fred Phelps during his sojourn among the Vernal heathen. "He was hot-headed and peculiar," remembers Nelson about Fred then. Eventually the minister decided to cease his association with Phelps because of his hostility and aggressiveness. "The last time I saw him, he was traveling through (on the road preaching). My wife and I gave them a hundred dollars and a bunch of handkerchiefs." When told of what Phelps was doing today, Ed said: "I'm not surprised. He was heading that way. He was so brilliant, he was dangerous. He was getting involved in the idea that only he was saved...going into heresy..." Though vandals damaged the tent, the boys from Bob Jones continued to hold nightly meetings there during the rest of their vacation. No one came, but Nelson reports they did manage to convert two teenage girls-at least for the summer.
At the end of their stay, Fred got ordained. Ordained? At 17? Isn't that too young? "No, it isn't," replies B.H. McAlister, who did the ordaining. "If he can pass the test, he is eligible. I don't think the word of God is bound by age."
Phelps was at least three years younger than most when they become ministers. Southern Baptists do not require a candidate for the ministry be a graduate of seminary. McAlister, who has helped ordain hundreds of ministers, said an examination board of 10 to 20 ministers would ask a candidate questions about doctrines and scriptures. Not everyone passed. Fred Phelps did-but only after McAlister and a missionary convinced the teenager he was wrong on a scriptural fine point. Which point was that? According to McAlister, Phelps considered the local church to be more than a place of fellowship-for him, membership in the local congregation directly corresponded to membership in the Body of Christ.
Phelps may have conceded the point to be ordained, but, for 40 years, his family and church members in Topeka have been controlled by his threat that, if they depart his congregation, they must carry a letter of permission from him. In addition, they must join a congregation that he approves. Otherwise, as with Mark and Nate, the pastor Phelps draws up the dreaded missive ordering the straying sheep to be 'delivered to Satan for the destruction of the flesh.' "We barely knew him," admits McAlister, who settled upon Fred the distinction of having been both baptized and ordained in a single eventful summer.
Phelps returned that autumn to Bob Jones, but left after a year without graduating. Later he would say he did so because the school was racist. In 1983, the IRS revoked the tax exemption of Bob Jones, accusing it of practicing racial discrimination. From there, Fred went north to the Prairie Bible Institute near Calgary, Alberta. But after two semesters he moved on.
Sources have disclosed the head of the college felt pastor Phelps might be clinically disturbed. Compatible with that diagnosis, Fred's next stop was Southern California. There he enrolled at John Muir College in Pasadena.
Campaigning to change community sexual mores with a sign and a sidewalk harangue has been a four-decade effort for Fred. His implacable efforts at John Muir to root out necking and petting on campus and dirty jokes in the classroom reached the pages of TIME magazine (11 June 1951). After being forbidden to preach on campus and getting removed at least once by police from college property, Fred finally found a following that cheered his defiance of authority when he returned to harangue from a sympathizer's lawn across the street. TIME speculated it might presage a movement back to more solid values by the younger generation. Phelps cashed in on the notoriety of the TIME article to become a traveling evangelist again-this time with more success than in Vernal.
In return for spending a week or two preaching at an established church or giving a revival, he would receive a bed, his meals, and a small stipend for gas to the next assignment. It was during one such ministry in Phoenix that he met his wife, Marge. She was a student at Arizona Bible School and an au-pair with the family that took in the itinerant evangelist. Today's Mrs. Phelps remembers being curious about the minister who'd been in TIME magazine. Laura Woods, the mistress of the house who gave voice lessons during the day, remembers Fred was the perfect guest. He helped build a room, mowed the lawn, made the beds, and washed the dishes, she said. When the couple decided to get married, Mrs. Woods made Marge Simms two dresses-a wedding gown and an outfit to travel in. They were married May 15, 1952. Laura and her husband, Arthur, remain friends today with Fred and Marge Phelps. The couple moved to Albuquerque for a year, where Marge kept house while Fred traveled a circuit around the Southwest-one that took him from Durango, Colorado to Tucson, Arizona. Fred Jr., the first of their thirteen children, was born May 4, 1953.
The family then lived in Sunnyslope, Arizona for a year while pastor Phelps continued his itinerant ministry. Mrs. Phelps was eight months pregnant with Mark when Pastor Leaford Cavin at the Eastside Baptist Church in Topeka invited Fred to come and preach.
On Fred Jr.'s first birthday, the family arrived in the Kansas capital to find it an auspicious day indeed: May 4, 1954 was the day the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its historic decision, Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, the landfall desegregation case which ruled separate but equal schools for blacks and whites were unconstitutional. The Pastor Phelps saw the coincidence of the Brown decision -just as he was deciding where to settle-as a sign telling him that Topeka was The Place. On that watershed day for America, if the new arrivals visited the state capitol building, perhaps Phelps was struck by the dramatic mural of the raging giant on the burning prairie, rifle in one hand, Bible (law book) in the other. Perhaps, as he has hinted, Pastor Phelps came to Topeka, saw it had become a national forum on black civil rights, saw the power of the legal profession, and decided it had fallen to him: Kansas would have a new John Brown.
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