Widget Free Sidebar

The site I am working on is here: internalcompass.us/castle

You’ll see I have a sidebar that is somewhat designed (at least in terms of the graphic layout I’m going to want.) At this point, I have it set up as one single image so I can just see how it looks, and nothing is linked.

I have a widget at the top of the sidebar because otherwise the sidebar doesn’t display at all. Frankly, I don’t want any widgets. I just want to design myself a sidebar.php file. Is there a way I can manipulate the code for twentytwelve so it doesn’t remove the sidebar if there are no widgets? Right now, it removes the sidebar if there are no widgets, so I am putting one there just to get it to show up.

Here’s the code I have in sidebar.php in the child theme fyi. gracias

<?php
/**
 * The sidebar containing the main widget area.
 *
 * If no active widgets in sidebar, let's hide it completely.
 *
 * @package WordPress
 * @subpackage Twenty_Twelve
 * @since Twenty Twelve 1.0
 */
?>
	<?php if ( is_active_sidebar( 'sidebar-1' ) ) : ?>
		<div id="secondary" class="widget-area" role="complementary">
			<?php dynamic_sidebar( 'sidebar-1' ); ?>
		</div><!-- #secondary -->
	<?php endif; ?>

    <a href=""> <img align="right" alt="sig" border="0" src="http://internalcompass.us/castle/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/sidebar.jpg" /></a></