PHOTO CAPTION-
Maria Heil makes dinner in her Hopewell Township home. She juggles her
home responsibilities with the duties of her position as state
coordinator of the Second Amendment Sisters, a gun-rights group.

PHOTO CAPTION-
Maria Heil, Pennsylvania state coordinator and national press
coordinator for the Second Amendment Sisters, takes aim at the rifle
range in Stewartstown.

They awoke before dawn, filled a thermos with coffee, donned blaze-orange camouflage, packed rifles and ammunition into a Ford Ranger and headed to Butler County for the first day of buck season.

It was a test. Dale Heil wanted to know how the city girl he intended to marry would react to a hunting expedition preceded by a tromp through the woods on a chilly November morning.

The sun rose while they sat in lawn chairs, looking and listening for deer. Within a couple of hours, they’d spotted a spiked buck sneaking from tree to tree. "He said cover your ears, and I heard BANG, ‘Got it,’" the woman recalls years later. Dale Heil went to claim his prize and looked over at Maria, who stood smiling and applauding his kill. "I thought, ‘This is cool. It’s only 7:30a.m., we didn’t have to freeze too long, we can go home, have some hot chocolate and we’ll have meat on the table," she says.

Maria passed the test, and the two were married one month later, in December 1984. The hunting expedition was the first time Maria Heil had really been around guns. Today, she is one of the most sought-after speakers in the nation’s gun-control debate.

Taking a stand:

Maria Heil takes a pro-gun-rights stance as Pennsylvania state coordinator and national press coordinator for the Second Amendment Sisters, a Dallas-based grassroots non-profit organization that opposes additional gun laws and supports enforcement of existing laws.

"If someone had told me that I would be in just about every newspaper, on every news show, I would’ve laughed at them and said, ‘I’m a stay-at-home mom with four kids,’" 39-year-old Heil says from the kitchen of her Hopewell Township home.

In recent months, Heil has been interviewed by every major broadcasting network and been featured in stories by The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune and The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Natural advocate:

She’s a natural for the pro-gun-rights cause. She’s quick and eloquent. Statistics roll off her tongue, opinions are backed by fact, and she’s ready to dispute any argument the other side volleys her way. Today, she slips a white apron over her head and begins preparing a tuna casserole for dinner. It’s a "quiet day" for her. At the moment, Dale, 43, and their 12-year-old son, Sam, are fishing at Leibs Creek in Hamilton Township. And the girls —Laura, 10, Maggie, 9, and Rose, 7 — have just started back to school.

A computer sitting on a table behind her surrounded by a mountain of papers is turned off. Heil has given one interview this morning and is about to begin a second.

She doesn’t mind the spotlight, most of the time. Being shuffled to and from studios in a limousine has its perks, she says.

Sometimes she’s tired and interviewer’s questions aggravate her, other times she welcomes them.

Heil recalls one television phone-in show when she was to talk for 10 minutes and spend the rest of the hour responding to callers’ questions. "No one called. I ended up talking for an hour, and it’s tiring," she says. "Sometimes I kind of wish life would go back to the way it was."

Normalcy for the family of six goes something like this: Rosie has soccer practice Mondays and Fridays. Tuesdays and Thursdays, Maggie and Laura practice soccer and Sam practices football. Wednesdays are reserved for afternoon catechism classes, and, later on, Sam and Laura, the two oldest, shoot sporting clays. And on Sundays, the kids play soccer.

"There are no breaks, there never have been," she says, mixing tuna, onions and celery in a bowl at the counter.

Web fluke:

Becoming state coordinator for SAS was a fluke. Heil was looking for apro-gun-rights Web site when she found the site for the Million Mom March, an organization that supports tightened gun laws and that marched in Washington, D.C. on Mother’s Day. Heil perused the organization’s policies and didn’t like what she saw. She continued looking at Web sites and eventually found the SAS.

Heil’s group didn’t have the celebrity backing of the Million Mom Marchers, but it decided to stage a pro-gun-rights rally in Washington, D.C. on Mother’s Day to represent their cause. Heil became involved, telling other sports enthusiasts about SAS.

Eventually, the group’s founders asked Heil to fill in as state coordinator, a volunteer position.

As Mother’s Day approached, her days became more hectic.

"It was every woman’s nightmare. The house goes to pot for six weeks because I’m doing all this stuff, and I have every major network in my house filming," Heil says. She and other SAS members thought things would fizzle out after the march on the nation’s capital, but the gun-control debate was just heating up.

More interviews were scheduled and completed. The telephone rang off the hook. Heil responded to e-mails, wrote press releases, organized more rallies and gave more interviews.

All to get one point across:

"Gun control increases violent crime by shifting the balance of power to the criminals’ favor. Criminals are criminals and they will have guns."

Dual roles:

Whether that point has gained acceptance remains to be seen, but Heil’s dedication to the cause has only increased in recent months. During the summer, she rushed her children out of the house for a few hours of uninterrupted time with them.

Most of the time, her brown hair is pulled back to a pony-tail, and her blue jeans and T- shirt are attire for working around the house, tending the chickens, turkeys and dog. Heil doesn’t move fast or slow, but steadily. She knows what needs to be done and does it.

She’s managed to escape with her family to their cottage in Erie three times this summer, leaving the garden behind her house to the weeds.

"She’s more than just one woman," Sam says of what he’s learned from watching his mother’s efforts. "She has the courage of two women, the charisma of a leader, and a whole lot of other things I can’t think of right now." Heil turns from the stove and gives her son a kiss. "Get out of here, we’re going to celebrate when you come back," she says, her eyes welling with tears. Sam doesn’t get much alone time with mom and dad, Heil explains, so they’re taking him out for Chinese food while the girls are in school.

The kids were good this summer. They played amongst themselves or with friends while their father, a chiropractor, worked at his practice near Baltimore and their mother debated gun control.

"I speak from the heart. I have all the facts and figures to incorporate into everything I say, but the most important thing is to defend our Second Amendment rights," Heil says. That right allows her to own a gun for self-defense and sport.

It’s not something she thought about as a girl. She grew up in a suburban Chicago house where the only gun was a disabled rifle once owned by her father’s great uncle, who’d been a sheriff in Ottuma, Iowa. It wasn’t until she and Dale Heil began dating in June 1984 that she really handled a firearm. After the two graduated college, were married, and left Illinois, Heil enrolled in courses to learn about guns, the outdoors, and hunting.

"We didn’t have anything, no place to live, no money and a pile of debt," Heil says. But they’ve built a life on the foundation of a relationship they sealed more than 16 years ago just after sunrise in the woods of Butler County.

The only test now is one of skill. "I still haven’t shot a deer," Heil says.