Charles Lomaistro opened his large, multicolored umbrella.

So did Elizabeth Stone.

Same for Tina Carroll and three dozen other "silent witnesses."

Side by side, they stood in a colorful display of unity stretched along South George Street in Millersville early Monday morning, awaiting the arrival of the anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church at Millersville University.

"I'm out here because I've got a lot of friends who are gay," said Lomaistro, 18, a freshman from Philadelphia. "I'm just here to support them and protect them in any way that I can."

So were another 100 or so students and community members who had gathered outside the Student Memorial Center to counterprotest the church members.

Stone, a 19-year-old freshman from Carlisle, wore a piece of duct tape decorated with a heart over her mouth — signifying what would have been a peaceful, silent counterpart to Westboro's message of hate.

"Their message is so obscure. They're obscuring the truth and obscuring God's love," Stone said.

But on this day, in this college town, Westboro was a no-show.

The church, which had said it planned to picket during a five-day "Silencing the Hate" program of lectures and forums, backed out.

Shirley Phelps-Roper, the eldest daughter of Westboro Pastor Fred Phelps, said in an e-mail that the church canceled its visit to Lancaster County because it had redirected its effort to celebrating the deaths of 29 coal miners outside Catholic churches in Wheeling, W. Va.

"The destruction of this nation is IMMINENT!! Therefore, this little flock of slaughter is running to and fro — when God reached down from heaven in response to the brute beasts in WV who were breathing out threatening and slaughter against this little church, and SMACKED that mine sending 29 straight to hell, it required that we redirect our efforts for my team," she wrote.

" … We decided that the rebels would have to hold that picket without us!" she wrote.

Westboro Baptist Church members have been in West Virginia for several days since last Monday's explosion at Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch mine in southern West Virginia.

On Sunday, six members of the church stood outside the Basilica of the Co-Cathedral of the Sacred Heart holding signs with messages like "Miners in Hell."

The church, which consists mainly of members of a single family, had planned to target the Sunday screening of "The Anatomy of Hate," a film about hate and hate groups that features Westboro.

Westboro members conduct anti-gay protests across the country. They often target military funerals, carrying signs that read, "Thank God for Dead Soldiers," saying those deaths are God's punishment for America's tolerance of homosexuality.

At Millersville, a group of veterans and parents of soldiers gathered with counterprotesters.

Among them was Terry Styer, the father of U.S. Army Pfc. Brandon Styer. The 19-year-old Conestoga Valley High School graduate was killed by an improvised explosive device, or IED, in southern Afghanistan in October.

The day before their son's funeral, the Styers received a letter from Westboro claiming he "died in vain," and that God killed him for defending a nation of "sodomite hypocrites."

"I don't feel it's a right to have anybody be able to send out vile information like this — letters to people who've just lost a son or a daughter or a father or a mother in a combat situation," Styer said.

"It's just not right. I don't care about freedom of speech or whatever. You can say all you want about freedom of speech, but there is a time to tone it down."

Pointing to other veterans who joined him, Styer said: "These are the people who gave that right to those people, and to say, 'Thank God for IEDs,' I find appalling."

The silent witnesses and counterprotesters weren't the only ones awaiting the confrontational church members. So, too, were a dozen police officers and a county prosecutor.

The university department, which typically has two officers patrolling the campus on Monday, doubled up. The borough police department called in two extra officers and brought in the officers who normally work the midnight shift.

District Attorney Craig Stedman said the prosecutor was at the scene to provide advice and "answer questions as to what conduct is criminal and what is not to help make sure any action taken by the police is the most appropriate."

Westboro church members often alert local police departments when they are planning to picket so that there is adequate protection.

"Evidently, they had an incident where a couple of their members had supposedly, allegedly got assaulted," said Millersville Borough police Chief John John D. Rochat.

Many of the counterprotesters carried handmade signs. "Keep hate off campus," one sign read. "love > hate," read another.

Many were not students but had come to show solidarity with opponents of Westboro's message.

Carroll, 44, lives near the university. She held her own umbrella and stood along the street with students.

"Judge not lest ye be judged," she said. "I don't think God's a hater. Actually, I'm pretty sure he's not. I'm not a Bible-thumping Christian, but the message of Christ has nothing to do with, no relation at all to what they're saying."

The umbrellas are meant to create a visual and spiritual firewall between the confrontational anti-gay group and passersby.

Kati Trent, 19, of Manheim, carried a tongue-in-cheek sign that targeted Westboro's members: "The Nazis were better anti-Semitics."

"I just think these people shouldn't be taken seriously," she said, "and I want to make a mockery of what they're about."

Chris Friedman, 18, of Mountville carried a sign the read: "If hell was a real place, that's where WBC is going."

He called the Westboro church "kind of disgusting.

"Everybody's entitled to their opinions, but when you go out of your way to be a jerk toward other people, at funeral homes and stuff, that's just wrong," he said.

When it became clear after about 45 minutes of waiting that Westboro would not be showing up, Blaise Liffick, the operations director of Silent Witness PA, thanked the crowd.

He said he had mixed feelings about Westboro not showing up.

"I think on the one hand, obviously, the students put in a lot of preparations, and it does sort of seem like that was for nothing," said Liffick, a professor of computer science at Millersville. "But I hope that they understand that just showing up was an important thing to do.

"From that perspective, I'm pleased Westboro put us on their schedule. I think that students have benefited from it."

It wasn't the first time Westboro skipped a planned picket. Two weeks ago, the group said it would picket at Temple University, but never showed up. Last week, Westboro also failed to show for a planned picket of the same film at Ohio Wesleyan University.

Allies, MU's gender and sexuality alliance group, is one of the sponsors of the university's five-day program. Its president, Ash McLaughlin, said she was pleased with the student response.

"I know Westboro didn't show, but the fact that all these students could come together and be peaceful and just show their support in various ways — whether they were counterprotesting or silent witnessing — was a great unifying factor," she said.

In the end, McLaughlin said, the response to the church's planned picket fit nicely into Millersville's "Silencing the Hate" program this week.

"We kind of got the reward without having to go through the punishment," she said. "We got the unity and we got the togetherness we wanted, and we didn't have to be worried about being yelled at and screamed at."

tmurse@lnpnews.com