Carol Gaddy stands next to a federal flag posted along the edge of her property along Coops Creek in Dunlap, Tenn. Her stand for God-given rights honors veterans and soldiers, she says. (Photo David Tulis)
A feisty homeowner in Southeastern Tennessee who has defied a court’s order to voluntarily allow a search of her house says she is standing for constitutional rights and the American way upheld by military veterans around the country.
Carol Gaddy, who has been in hiding for months outside Sequatchie County, is hoping for a break in her case — namely results of an engineering study of her disputed house that gives it a clean bill of health.
By David Tulis / Noogaradio 1240 AM 92.7 FM
However, Mrs. Gaddy, 69, faces the hard reality of a contempt finding by Tennessee chancery court judge.
In a rapid-fire interview in February just after she went into hiding, Mrs. Gaddy says she is fighting to ward off an “inspection” of her house by a small-town government. Because she won’t voluntarily agree to “an inspection,” Judge Thomas Graham plans to jail her until she voluntarily agrees. In civil contempt, the defendant holds the key of to release by yielding to the court’s demands.
Defending cause of sacred dead
She connects her resistance to civil prosecution by “big bad bullies” as upholding the honor and dignity of American service members whom she contends died in foreign U.S. wars defending American liberties.
“I have an oath before God. These men are not going to make me break it,” she declares. “Every woman that is in the American Legion ladies’ auxiliary, we have a preamble, and every meeting we say that, you speak that — you stand and you place your hand on your heart, and that is an oath before God that I will only support with my life 100 percent Americanism.
“And I’m telling you what is happening in Dunlap by these authority people is not Americanism. It is communism. It is socialism. It is total witchcraft control.”
Does she count lightly the dreary cell life ahead of her, the high costs, the uncertainty, the humiliation of manacle and bar?
“Yeah, my oath before God to keep my promise before God is more important to me — I have to lead these men [her accusers] to judgment. I have an oath to God to uphold 100 percent Americanism in everything I do in every decision.”
She has been in hiding because she doubts her health, and that of her husband, Thomas, 70, would survive jail.
‘Handful of mud & threw it’
To yield “would be like I picked up a handful of mud, on the ground, and threw it into the face of our veterans if I fail to try to hold on to and keep what they have suffered, what they have bled — what they have died for. I have worked for veterans causes for the past 20 years or more — actively.”
Mrs. Gaddy says a brother was a Vietnam veteran. “You look at these gold-star moms whose sons were never returned. And you know, they still wait 30 years, 35 years, just for word? I am saying, too, many brave American souls, men and women, have fought for our freedom in this country, that we can remain free, but unfortunately while our government sent them on foreign soil to fight communism, communism was seeping into American by the people who were not patriotic, who were not willing to go fight. These veterans had a pure dedication to what they were doing.”
For her not to stand tall, she repeats is “like throwing mud in the face of our American veterans.” For Mrs. Gaddy not to stand is shameful. “No sir, you’re not going to take and rip out of our hands what these veterans have paid such a high price to win for me. Sooner or later we’ve got to take a stand.”
Part of a voluminous court file, this letter threatens a petition for contempt of court of any work is done by the Gaddy family on its private property in Dunlap, Tenn., as the mayor demands an “inspection.”
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