Sometimes, when she's heading out to find her car in a crowded parking lot, Peggie Lauber Miller has a dream about what she'd like to see there some day.
"To be in a parking lot at some church, some small business, and every car would have a white ribbon on it" is that dream, she says.
"And then I'd have to wonder ... 'Now, where did I park?'"
She has another dream, too.
Within three years, when she's 80, she'd like to see "no more porn stores or places that give sexual massages across Lancaster County ... then we would be free from that horrible thing," pornography, she says.
There have been many successes for Miller and her Good News Together We Stand organization and its White Ribbon Against Pornography campaign.
The White Ribbon campaign, an annual effort to raise awareness about pornography, celebrated its 20th year this week.
But Miller, the 77-year-old great-grandmother who founded it and leads it today, would like to see these dreams come true before she could rest from her efforts.
It wasn't her intention to be a porn-fighter all her life, Miller says.
It wasn't until the early 1980s, when she started seeing the effects of sexual abuse and how it ruined families, that Miller started studying the issue and seeing what she could do.
She also felt God guiding her to make the issue her mission.
In the 20 years since the first White Ribbon campaign, she has been encouraged by the closing of two of the four adult bookstores that were in Lancaster when she started.
The petite but feisty Miller has been called "an annoyance" and "an old fuddy-duddy," she said with a laugh.
But she also feels that "deep down, I think some of them (opponents of hers) respect (her) tenaciousness."
"And I try to do it now with a smile, and not vinegar."
Miller, an Allentown-area native who moved to Lancaster County in 1977, is a former teacher, having taught in the early 1950s in Saugerties, N.Y.
She now lives in suburban Lancaster.
She had raised her two sons when God gave her "a vision of a clean Lancaster City," meaning one free of pornography, she said.
She educated herself on the issue and got to know the police, district attorneys and others who could go after the stores.
As she went about contacting churches for help with the White Ribbon effort and attending state hearings related to pornography, Miller said she was stunned to learn the problem's economic impact on society.
Pornography, she says, fuels the need for more agency caseworkers to counsel sex-abuse victims and more fees for divorces and child-custody cases when porn has led to a family breakup.
Miller has won a variety of awards for her efforts.
Eight years ago, she was the first woman to be given the Pennsylvania Family Institute's top "Hometown Hero Award," and in 2002 she won ACTION of Lancaster County's "Outstanding Citizen Award."
Miller's organization is called Good News Together We Stand. It was founded in 1984 with the encouragement of the Rev. Morton Hill, who was then president of the Morality in Media organization.
When white ribbons and bows became her group's symbol in 1987, their display drew local attention to what was then known as Pornography Awareness Week.
The name was later modified to White Ribbon Against Pornography Week. Miller said a white ribbon is easy to remember, plus the old title led some to wonder, sarcastically, 'Oh, you're making them aware of pornography, eh?"
Along with her white ribbons, Miller, a 1952 graduate of the University of Vermont with a bachelor of science degree from the College of Agriculture, is known for her red hat.
"I had my hat back in the late 1960s, before the Red Hat Ladies began," she says.
Miller also is the chaplain for the U.S. Cavalry 8th Regiment Association, and she has made two trips to Korea in the last five years to see where her late brother Bob fought in 1950.
Her brother was wounded in Korea and later was declared missing in action for 24 days when the Chinese entered the war at Unsan.
"Bob made it back to our lines with the help of the Lord and his Boy Scout training, and some North Korean lads who were escaping," said Miller, who also is busy looking for information on her late father's service in World War I, for which he won a service medal.
She has a son, Bob, who's 52, and another son, David, 50.
Miller had always gone to church, but it was a divorce in 1980 that really put her faith to the test, she says now.
But in the end, her faith was strengthened more than she could imagine at the time.
"That was traumatic. It was a year of walking with the Lord that really grew me ... but I know I wouldn't be where I am today with the Lord if I was still happily married.
"Now, I see that he (God) is real."
Despite her keen awareness of pornography and other social ills, Miller is overjoyed when she sees older couples walking hand-in-hand, or celebrating an occasion like a 60th wedding anniversary.
"I think that's so-o-o-o-o marvelous," she says. "I think, 'Wow! They did it! They've kept it together!' "
Good News Together We Stand is the oldest pornography-fighting organization in existence in Pennsylvania, Miller reports proudly.
When Morality in Media president Hill was here in the 1980s, Miller heard him say how he got involved and, he added, "Twenty years later, I'm still in it!"
Miller thought to herself at the time, "Oh no, Lord, not me! I'm not going to be in this for 20 years ... this is going to be wrapped up in a couple of years."
But now, she says, she won't rest until the porn stores are gone.
Does she ever tire of the criticism, or of hearing that she's a fuddy-duddy and just needs to get with it?
"Oh yeah! As you get older, you know, they can say that with a lot of things. But I look at that as a positive ... people in their 40s might not want to lift this up" and keep the issue at the forefront, she says.
"We need this voice, raised through this yearly campaign," she declares.
Miller has plenty of other interests, such as her house and yard work, visiting with friends and going to public meetings, especially during White Ribbon week.
CONTACT US:
doconnor@LNPnews.com or 481-6033
