‘We Work Hard and, if People Work Hard, . . . You Respect Them’ : After Turmoil, Old Fishing Port Comes to Terms With ‘Moonies’

Gone are the housewives who marched every summer for four years screaming, “Moonies go home!” Gone are the bumper stickers proclaiming, “Don’t Let Moon Rise Over Gloucester.” There hasn’t been a bomb threat in years, police say.

The prolonged turmoil that followed the arrival of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s disciples in this old fishing port five years ago seems a distant memory. Ideological friction remains but, in general, townsfolk and members of Moon’s Unification Church have attained peaceful coexistence.

The “Moonies,” as they are widely nicknamed, have settled into the local fisheries business, as they intended. Opponents of the Unification Church have taken to inviting them to speak at high schools and community colleges, as a lesson for the unwary young.

They’re nice people, middle class, educated, said Kathleen Hurlburt, a self-described Moon-watcher. “We want the kids to see these are people who are misdirected. The kids can see they never answer questions directly. . . . These members are victims of a multimillion-dollar corporation that has put them through indoctrination camps to turn them against their families and friends.”

Moon devotees are quietly rearing families, working at church businesses, volunteering at nursing homes. They refrain from recruiting among the young in this city of 28,000 north of Boston.

“They’ve crawled into a hole,” said Sylvester Smith, a podiatrist and leading Unification Church opponent. “They’re being very low-profile.”

The overall change in feeling toward the members of the church strikes even Gloucester natives as remarkable.

“Five or six years ago, every kid in the city threw rocks at them,” said a man who asked not to be identified. “You hardly even hear them mentioned any more.”

Mayor Richard R. Silva said: “It’s almost as if they’ve gone to the moon.”

Not to the moon, but into their work, where they have maintained their foothold in the 363-year-old city by being conciliatory and offering fishermen higher prices than other dealers.

“We work hard and, if people work hard, whether you like them or not, you respect them,” said Galen Brooks, 42, who has lived in Gloucester for three years and worked for the church for 22 years.

Much of the work of the disciples has been in mending relations with their neighbors in the city, where men have gone to sea for generations.

Not much fuss was made when the church bought Gloucester’s largest lobster dealership in 1978 after Moon visited the port and fell in love with it.

But trouble began later, when the church bought a popular restaurant, a villa that had been a retreat for Catholic nuns, a 14-room house and a parcel of land earmarked as the site of a church maritime academy, and when church members caught more bluefin tuna than did local fishermen.

“I’m beginning to feel like we’re being invaded,” said then-Mayor Leo Alper, who threatened to run the church out of town.

Vandals wrote obscenities on a church fence, tore up the interior of a church boat and shot at the villa. Anonymous callers threatened to bomb the Unification fleet. Pickets, mostly housewives from the East Gloucester neighborhood, marched before the restaurant, calling Moon’s followers communists. (The church is militantly anti-communist.)

Residents avoided the restaurant and fishermen boycotted a church-sponsored tuna derby that offered $100,000 in prizes. Most of it was won by church members.

As public relations deteriorated, the church devised a new strategy.

Followers offered to set up scholarships for fishermen’s children with their tuna derby winnings. School officials rejected the offer. They said they wanted the money to go into a general scholarship fund so recipients would not know the source of the money. Church members volunteered to hold anti-drug seminars in city schools. Officials rejected that also.

Other steps proved more successful.

As a peace offering to the new mayor on the day he was sworn in, the church agreed in January, 1984, to give the city $25,000 yearly in lieu of taxes on the retreat. It pays about $24,000 in taxes on all other Gloucester property.

The young, single Unification members who lived in the villa five years ago were replaced by older members with families who live in single houses and do a lot of charitable work in the city.

To attract the business of local lobstermen, church member Nick Sasao, who runs the lobster dealership, said, he usually offers them about 5 cents more per pound than other dealers. “We’re not here just to make money,” he said. “We want to help fishermen.”

Even so, Sasao said, only about 10% of local lobstermen sell to the company, not because they’re boycotting the church business but because they are fiercely loyal to their own dealers.

But the peacemaking tactics appear to have impressed other citizens.

‘Stay by Themselves’

“I wish people would leave them alone,” said Marjorie Mandello, a secretary in the city’s tax assessment office. “I’ve never had a problem with them. They stay by themselves. We’re all citizens.”

Mandello said her son and nephew sell their lobster catches to the church dealership and tie their boats at the church dock. “The check is there every Friday. They don’t have to worry about it.”

Militancy among the detractors has subsided. The restaurant that housewives picketed every summer for years has been closed. “The will of the people has prevailed,” said one former picketer. Mayor Alper, who fought the church up to his last day in office, died last month.

With a sharp drop in fish catches and other industry troubles, Mayor Silva said, Gloucester has more to worry about than the Unification Church.

The Moon fleet numbers one or two vessels in winter but swells to 35 in summer for the Ocean Challenge Religious Education Program, which teaches the fundamentals of fishing and of close personal relationships.

Up at 3 A.M.

“It’s a challenge, getting up at 3 every morning, sitting on the water 13 hours a day,” longtime church member Brooks said. “And, with just one other person day after day, you don’t keep much hidden.”

The boats are built at a church-owned yard in Brooklyn, N. Y., and carry equipment similar to that of the Gloucester commercial fleet, but newer.

The initiates earn no wages. Proceeds from their catch go toward the cost of the program, which loses money most years, Brooks said.

“I like some Moonies,” said Gloucester fisherman Bernie Rose. “They’re hard-working fishermen who get out early and stay late. But do a few of them mess us up and cost us money? I’d have to say affirmative on that.”

Moon followers fish in groups of three boats because they attach spiritual significance to the triad. Rose said the triads sometimes crowd fishing grounds and get in the way of other tuna boats.

Clash at Sea

The only reported clash took place last summer. The owner of a boat from Quincy charged that a church boat rammed his vessel in a dispute over an 800-pound tuna he had hooked. The Moon boat skipper denied it.

Although Moon’s fishermen have failed to endear themselves to some of their colleagues, Moon’s fish dealers have hooked quite a few.

The dealers offer fishermen at least 25 cents more per pound for their tuna than other dealers, Rose said. At the height of the season, the price for the fish can reach $5 a pound. The catch is flown to Tokyo, where it fetches up to $20 a pound at auction.

“They helped us in one sense by raising the price of tuna to higher levels,” Rose said. “They were the first group to up the ante and get a lively competition between dealers.”