Susan Star Paddock

Honors, criticism given to activist
By MEG BERNHARDT
Evening Sun Reporter
04/28/2007  
 
An Adams County anti-casino activist received two awards this month for preservation and peacemaking in the community, but local casino advocates are criticizing her selection.

A casino proposed for the Gettysburg area by a group of investors led by David LeVan drew opposition and support before state gaming regulators chose other locations for slots licenses in December 2006.

Many have attributed the gaming board's choice against awarding a license to local grassroots opposition group No Casino Gettysburg.

This week, the national Civil War Preservation Trust recognized No Casino leader Susan Star Paddock as the recipient of its Carrington Williams Battlefield Preservationist of the Year 2007 award.
The local Interfaith Center for Peace and Justice also chose Paddock as Peacemaker of the Year 2007. The Peacemaker award was given to Paddock at the Adams County Public Library on the same night the Rev. Karl Mattson, of Gettysburg College, received the Peacemaker of a Lifetime award.

Paddock said the awards should be directed at all of the volunteers who helped in the 20-month campaign against the casino.

Paddock was chosen for the trust's award because of her extraordinary effort to protect the character and atmosphere of Gettysburg, said Civil War Preservation Trust spokeswoman Mary Goundrey. She said Paddock received a standing ovation from everyone in the room when it was announced.

"This is just a huge victory for everyone," Goundrey said, noting Paddock had put her life on hold for two years to lead the fight.

But Pro Casino Adams County, a citizens group in favor of the casino proposal, criticized Paddock's selection for both awards.

"It is as if Ms. Paddock is saying, 'Look at me! I'm the big hero of those who agree with my moral stand on an issue, and I don't care about anyone else,'" said Pro Casino member Debi Golden. "Ms. Paddock in no way acted as a peacemaker regarding the casino issue. She was a self-righteous combatant."

And Pro Casino member Jeff Klein asked how Paddock could be given an award for battlefield preservation without preserving any "hallowed ground."

"I think Mr. LeVan and Jennifer LeVan should have gotten that award," Klein said. "They donated $30,000 out of their own pockets to restore the monuments at Gettysburg."

The award givers expected the controversy, said Interfaith president Denise Weldon-Siviy, but Paddock was chosen anyway.

"Obviously the people who had a vested interest in the casino would not agree with this, but many, many people in town and particularly people involved in peace issues looked at the long-term effect on things like the effect of gambling on poverty and crime, and things like that really are peace issues," Weldon-Siviy said.

And Goundrey said the trust believes Paddock deserves to be recognized for preservation.

"I think the key here, in terms of battlefield preservation, is that buying an acre of ground isn't the only way to preserve battlefields," Goundrey said. "A casino would have affected the character and the overall feeling and atmosphere."

Paddock herself anticipated the questions about her awards.

"Some people may be surprised that I'm being given this (peacemaker) award when I have led a 20-month campaign and spoken out so forcefully on a controversial issue. Can you challenge the powerful and make peace at the same time?" Paddock asked in her acceptance speech. "When the controversy is public, polite silence does more than erode our character. It can erode our democracy, and indeed it has – in our community and our nation."

Paddock said she was surprised and happy to receive the awards and described the award ceremonies as very moving. But she said the awards should really recognize all the volunteers in the No Casino movement.

"I think there's perhaps too much attention to me as an individual even by getting these awards because again I believe the awards belong to hundreds of dedicated workers and to the whole group," Paddock said.

Paddock said she never expected to receive the amount of fame, or infamy, she did when she become No Casino chairwoman.

"I felt called to do it by large numbers of people who were very, very concerned, and I was asked to do it, and I just stepped in," Paddock said. "You know, fools rush in."

Klein criticized No Casino for negative statements about the proposed casino operator, leaders and even the LeVans' dog. He said Paddock is one of the last people who should have won the Peacemaker award.

The Interfaith organization, which also organizes an annual county heritage festival and a Peacemaker camp, is painting the opposite picture.

"We felt she handled it especially well," Weldon-Siviy said. "It was not confrontational, at least not coming from the No Casino side."

Paddock said the campaign taught her about the importance of Gettysburg and speaking up in a democracy.

"I think being active locally is the key to maintaining our democracy," Paddock said. "I feel this very strongly that in order to maintain our democracy people must become more involved locally. Even when everybody said it was a done deal, (you can see) committed local people organizing together can make a difference."

http://www.eveningsun.com/fastsearchresults/ci_5254878

Underdog Success
By MEG BERNHARDT
Evening Sun Reporter
Evening Sun
02/18/2007
Long before a casino was proposed for Gettysburg, before a group of people met to oppose it, before she agreed to chair the group, before it took over her life, Susan Star Paddock's life was about rooting for the underdog.
It didn't have to be that way. Paddock was born in Dallas and her father was the vice president of advertising for Macy's. Like many people in the 1950s, her parents placed priority on what was beautiful, glamorous, trendy.
But Paddock soon decided she wanted to "understand at a deeper level what is important in life."
She began reading about Martin Luther King Jr. In 1965, she did a summer internship at the Henry Street settlement on the Lower East side of New York City, a very poor neighborhood.
As a social work student at Temple University (and pregnant with her daughter), she armed herself with a "Make Love, Not War" sign and marched in Washington to protest the Vietnam War.
"We definitely learned to question authority," Paddock said. "It was important to not just go along, but to really ask ourselves what is important. (In that time period), I think a lot of people started a search. Became seekers."
Though she would ultimately become simultaneously one of the most loved and most hated people in Adams County, Paddock came to Gettysburg without grand aspirations.
Her husband's father had Alzheimers and needed care, but they didn't want to move him from his Cumberland Township farm. So they left Columbia, Md., and settled at the farm in 1993.
Now 62, Paddock has a head of gray hair and three grandchildren. And she's became known in Civil War circles worldwide for leading a successful battle against Crossroads Gaming Resort and Spa, a casino proposed by a group of investors led by Gettysburg native David LeVan.
Paddock put her counseling career on hold while organizing the effort, credited by many as one of the best-run grassroots organizations in the nation. Its single task was to lobby the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board not to grant a slots license to Crossroads.
The group united historians and preservationists with church leaders and small business owners worried about losing customers to the casino or other casino-free historic destinations. But it also drew fire from locals hoping the casino would bring more jobs and economic development on major roads and designated for commercial development.
The gaming board gave licenses to two other casinos in December, and this month released a written statement about its decisions.
With that, No Casino Gettysburg disbanded.
Applying her skills
It will never be clear just how much sway No Casino had over the board, but the opposition against Crossroads was especially noted by the board in the decision, as well as other concerns that had been raised by No Casino as well.
Though she has been an activist all her life, this battle was different for Paddock.
"Everything else that I did fit within the rest of my life," she said. "This took over my life."
Paddock earned her master's degree in 1979 and started out as a child welfare social worker. Later, she became more interested in psychotherapy and also started branching into organization development for businesses, coaching managers and executives in relationship skills and facilitating discussions.
That's how she was elected chairwoman of No Casino Gettysburg.
She'd volunteered to lead a meeting to set goals for the just-forming group in spring 2005.
The other members liked her approach so much they suggested she be the leader.
"Well I had never done anything like that before," Paddock said. "I had never thought about gambling or casinos. I knew very little about the state law. I just didn't know, but I did pray about it, and I felt called to help with it."
Her husband, Jim, helped her lead the group. They'd get up every morning and start talking about it. They created a Web site with a comment board where people could post news and thoughts.
Paddock checked her e-mail constantly – sometimes getting 100 messages a day – and installed a separate phone line for the casino.
She and other volunteers went to Harrisburg every two weeks to sit in at gaming board meetings. The only other people who showed up were lawyers for the casino applicants or journalists.
People power
Many people thought the group couldn't combat wealthy investors. But every time Paddock began to get discouraged, she said, a new person would stop her at the grocery store or during an errand to thank her for what she was doing.
"When people say it's a done deal, they are saying that whatever clique has decided that something shall be, that that clique has control over the life of the rest of the citizens," Paddock said. "We proved in this case that there is no done deal."
Paddock was interviewed by reporters from around the world and helped circulate petitions which would ultimately get more than 65,000 signatures against the casino.
Their 1872 farmhouse became headquarters and activists from out of town would often stay with them on frequent trips to Gettysburg.
Most of the Paddock's farm is protected from future development by an easement they put into place in January 2005 through the Adams County Land Conservancy, of which Susan's husband Jim was a founding member. A trail runs through their property for Land Conservancy members to use and she calls it an "oasis" from the encroaching development which will one day completely surround it.
"There is a pull that people have here that many people don't understand," Paddock said. "People feel a very deep spiritual connection to this place. This world needs places where people can breathe freer air and reflect on their history and the history of this nation. And that is a strength that is so essential to the health of our society."
Paddock approached her group as she would any of her therapy clients. They established a vision, they agreed to be open with communication, they established "relationships," and they even had a process of "self-examination."
That might sound like therapy couch jibberish, but Paddock believes many of these things are the reason the group was successful as it was. That's because the group relied on information to refute the claims of Crossroads and connect people across the nation in a unified effort – things that might not have happened without Paddock's approach.
And she also felt the group had spiritual help and guidance. A Catholic, Paddock meditates every morning and tries to focus their life on values rather than superficiality.
As a testament to modest values, they compost everything and grow their own vegetables in a garden.
And she's decorated their farmhouse simply. A few sheets and blankets cover old couches in the living room, and they heat it only with a wood-burning stove.
And lately it's become a shrine to their victory, a victory Paddock says is a victory of the people.
She has a Boyd's Bear dressed in a No Casino T-shirt sitting on a shelf next to photos and framed newspaper clippings of the group.
"I think it was just an incredibly compelling more-than-full-time job for both Jim and I and what the people did, what these volunteers did, is very inspiring to me," Paddock said. "And I think that inspires others and so I want to remember it."
Positive thinking
There are parts of the 20-month saga she does not want to relive.
For instance, there were the threatening e-mails sent to her and other members of the group between July 2005 and May 2006. The e-mails contained death threats and lewd language directed at Paddock, police said.
Police eventually charged a 24-year-old Gettysburg area man with harassment and terroristic threats, but Paddock doesn't like talking about the case. It was upsetting, she said, and scary.
"But we had already come so far, we couldn't give up," Paddock said. "Too many people were counting on us."
And she always tries to think positively, even toward the investors of Crossroads, an idea she hated.
"I try to see the good in everybody. I don't think the investors were bad people," Paddock said. "I don't think they fully grasped who they might be hurting. People don't always think things out clearly."
Characterized as a rabble-rouser by many in Adams County, Paddock's critics have said she created controversy where none had to exist. After all, the massive Gateway Gettysburg complex just across the street from the proposed casino was built without a peep from preservationists.
And Paddock didn't shy away from calling the project "divisive" throughout the fight. But as she sees it, the casino was a "bad idea" bound to draw complaints. That's why people got upset, she says, not because of her. Her group merely gave those people an organized group.
She doesn't want there to be hard feelings, though, and is ready to move on.
And she is positive about the future of Gettysburg as well, including its economy.
"I think our economy is freed up by the defeat of this terrible idea," Paddock said the day the casino was rejected. "We are on the verge of a renaissance and I believe we can really build on our strengths now."
She's not planning on leading a preservationist charge now. She's ready to return to private practice and quiet gardening, she said.
But she does believe she's helped other local groups by showing them sometimes underdogs can succeed.
"It was a good call to have and it was a good call to be done with," she said.
Contact Meg Bernhardt at mbernhardt@eveningsun.com.