Battening Down

Seaport frets over Moonies

Hard by the harbor's edge in the venerable Massachusetts fishing port of Gloucester stands the bronze statue of a fisherman, dressed in slicker and sou'wester hat and clutching a schooner's wheel. He is gazing resolutely seaward, as if on the lookout for one of the gales that have claimed thousands of local sailors since the town was settled in 1623. But today a storm of quite a different kind is swirling through Gloucester. This one pits the townspeople against the Moonies, the disciples of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, whose Unification Church has been accused of brainwashing recruits, using questionable business practices and maintaining links with the secret intelligence services of South Korea. Complains Leo Alper, 66, the town's portly mayor: "I think eventually Moon would like to take over the city."

The Moonies first began worrying the townspeople in 1977, when a church owned company bought a lobster packing plant for $330,000, a 14-room house and a swatch of swampy waterfront land. The church explained that it was simply going into the fishing business, as it had elsewhere, and, as William Sanders, 27, one of the plant's two Moonie managers put it, Gloucester was "our kind of town."

Then last month the church really caused a furor by pulling off a slick real estate coup to obtain the Cardinal Gushing Villa, a 30-room retreat house, from the Daughters of Mary of the Immaculate Conception, a Connecticut-based order of nuns. The sisters were known to have been opposed to dealing with the Moonies. They sold the property for $1 million to New Hampshire Businessman Myron Block, who turned out to be in cahoots with the Unification Church. The next day, Block sold the retreat to the Moonies for $1,127,000. In addition, just two weeks ago, a Moonie-run firm paid $650,000 to buy a marina and Bob's Clam Shack, a bankrupt restaurant.

Mayor Alper fired off a telegram to Pope John Paul II asking his help in revoking the sale of the retreat house because of the apparent deception involved. Prayers were said every night for a week at a Catholic church for the young people to muster the strength to ward off any Moonie advances. Pickets began stalking up and down in front of the newly acquired marina carrying signs proclaiming: ONE MOON IN GLOUCESTER IS ALL WE

WANT! One night rocks were tossed through the windows of the lobster plant. Townspeople began signing an "open letter" to the Unification Church demanding a full explanation of its plans.

The Moonies blame the mayor for stirring up resentment against them, but there is widespread sullen suspicion in town about the church's plans. So far, however, no Moonies have tried to lure the young of Gloucester into their ranks, and no legal charges of any kind have been filed against the church and its operations.

Indeed, in a town of 27,000 that doubles in population each summer, the Moonies remain a minuscule minority: only five church members work in the lobster plant, and another 45 or so will be in town this summer to work on the church's ten boats and run the retreat house, which they plan to use as a "professional education center." So far the Moonies have been model citizens, paying full taxes on their highly successful fishing operations and offering the going rate for lobsters supplied by the locals. Admits one grizzled fish wholesaler: "The Moonies always send me a check quick, and they're courteous, clean-cut kids."

Mayor Alper remains unconvinced.

Says he: "If it was just a new business moving in, I wouldn't mind. But they're a mixture of church and business, and I think there's got to be more than the eye sees." The Moonies have aroused similar suspicion in Westchester County just north of New York City, where they have made extensive real estate investments in recent years. The vigilant town fathers of Gloucester hope to find a way of revoking the purchase of the retreat house on legal technicalities, and are ready to fight the church if it tries to get tax-exempt status for its property.

Meanwhile, the Moonies claim that for all the suspicion around town, some members of the citizenry would like to do even more business with them. Says Denny Townsend, 33, co-manager of the church's lobster plant: "I have people in my office every week who want to sell me a piece of Gloucester."

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