Activist Gene Stilp is well-known for his crusades to bring government into the light of day. But on July 2, 2016, he celebrates the 30th anniversary of his most famous feat–one performed secretly, in the dark of night.
Next month, Lady Liberty of the Susquehanna turns 30 years old. It is a Harrisburg roadside claim to fame—a mid-river Statue of Liberty replica visible to motorists streaming into the city.
How did it come to stand on an abandoned pier north of the historic Rockville Bridge? Prepare for a story of venetian blinds, helicopter lifts, snorkeling and CAT scans. Don’t be surprised by any of it. After all, it started in the mind of a man whose giant inflatable pig now stands as a symbol of government excess.
Gene Stilp wasn’t in the activist business in 1986. He was a carpenter then. It was also a centennial year, as the United States celebrated the 1886 installation in New York Harbor of Liberty Enlightening the World, a gift from France designed by sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi.
With his eye for visual symbols, Stilp decided that Harrisburg needed its own Statue of Liberty. In a friend’s two-car garage, he concocted a 17.5-foot replica from scrounged venetian blinds.
One friend painted the statue. Others provided boats. Stilp’s father secured the 450-pound edifice in the boat. (How did they know it was 450 pounds? “By the effort it took to take it up, and the number of people,” Stilp says.)
They gathered in the evening and, in darkness, guided the johnboat to Stilp’s preselected site, a 32-foot pier built in 1859 for a wooden railroad bridge dismantled in 1882.
“There it stood from 1882 to 1986,” Stilp says, until his stealthy team secured their Lady Liberty to the top.
At sunrise, sensation ensued. Commuters to Harrisburg via Route 322 told colleagues a Statue of Liberty had appeared in the river. Police warned motorists to keep moving to avoid accidents. With true American ingenuity, an enterprising boy brought his Halley’s Comet-gazing telescope and charged gawkers for close-up views.
“It pays tribute to what our values are,” says Stilp. “It makes people think on the way home or way to work that it’s about more than racing down the highway. It makes them reflect about where we live and what we do here in America.”
The original toppled in a 1992 spring storm. “People liked it so much that obviously I was going to replace it,” Stilp says. By then, the community knew the identity of the statue’s mystery builder, and the rebuild was no longer surreptitious or on the cheap. “Kind people” donated funds. No more venetian blinds were used. This four-ton behemoth beauty, officially measured on a junkyard scale, has a metal core and a wood body encased in fiberglass.
To ensure accuracy, Stilp bought a 12-inch Statue of Liberty replica in New York City and took it to a Polyclinic Hospital physician. The doctor ordered a CAT scan, and the souvenir underwent an X-ray that yielded cross-section images. Engineering students at Harrisburg Area Community College drew the designs. A woodworking business cut the stacked body pieces in three-quarter-inch plywood.
The head and torchbearing arm were fashioned “freestyle,” says Stilp. In 1997, the rebuilt replica was ready. Engineers designed the installation. A stonemason drilled holes in the pier. A helicopter company discounted its fee for hoisting the statue to the pier.
“I didn’t get much sleep the night before, because you’re putting people in harm’s way,” Stilp recalls.
Plus, with the element of surprise gone, permits were needed—a stack from 22 state and federal aviation, engineering, wildlife and historic agencies.
Today, motorists still stop to gaze at Lady Liberty of the Susquehanna. She has a Facebook page. Kayakers post close-up photos.
Stilp's friend Steve Oliphant, owner of Harrisburg-based Susquehanna Outfitters, volunteered the johnboat for the original installation.
“It took an abandoned bridge pier and turned it into a vibrant display of patriotism,” Oliphant says. And though the avid outdoorsman usually frowns on defacing natural settings, he believes that Stilp “saw this incredible natural canvas” for a work of art.
“It’s almost the perfect location for the perfect expression,” Oliphant says. “Sometimes it happens and violates all your tenets on the blend of natural and constructed, but I think it works. If there is an exception, this is the one.”
With its Lady Liberty, Harrisburg joined towns and nations worldwide with their own Statues of Liberty. “China, Japan, Ukraine—you name it, there’s a country with a Statue of Liberty replica,” says Edward Berenson, professor of history at New York University, and author of The Statue of Liberty: A Transatlantic Story.
The Statue of Liberty’s inscrutable form reflects almost any cause projected onto it, whether it’s immigration and freedom or independence and escape from oppression, says Berenson. People want their own “because it packs so much meaning,” he explains.
“When they build one for themselves or they buy one of the many replicas that have been made over the years, they’re making a special statement about how the Statue of Liberty represents what they think is important,” says Berenson.
Of course, like her big sister in New York, the Susquehanna’s Lady Liberty is feeling her age. The fiberglass is cracked. She could use a reglaze. Stilp has been snorkeling to assess the pier’s underwater condition, but even above the waterline, missing stones and the effects of battering by the river are apparent.
For the statue’s 30th anniversary, Stilp and supporters are launching a capital campaign, hoping to raise $25,000 for a facelift and a study of needed pier repairs. Donations will be accepted on a GoFundMe page. Prints and commemorative coins will be available.
The goal is sustaining a daily reminder of “our individual, spiritual core,” Stilp says. Lady Liberty of the Susquehanna “will last a long time.”
“It gets us back to our values, what America stands for. The Statue of Liberty is not political. It’s our people, and it reminds us of our basic freedom.”