December 22, 2003 - It is that time of year again, the time when every newspaper editor starts rating the news preparing for the obligatory articles in the week after Christmas ranking the “Biggest Stories of 200X”. You can hear the wheels turning and the cogs grinding as they try to mesh. Well, I suspect that they will get it wrong again this year.

The big story wasn’t the 461 Americans killed when their country tried its hand at invading and occupying a virtually defenseless oil patch 1/3 of the way around the world from home. It wasn’t the capture of Saddam or the continued freedom of Osama and Mullah Omar. It wasn’t the creation of the biggest Federal entitlement program since Lyndon Johnson. And it wasn’t the polls and the press naming Howard Dean as the Democratic nominee for President two months before the first primary votes will be cast in 2004. Nope, none of those reflect our times as well as my nominee for the Biggest Story of 2003.

The story that most accurately reflect America life in this third year of the 21st Century and the accomplishments of the First President of the 21st Century happened right here in Piatt County, just outside of Pierson Station. Margaret Gutierrez was arrested and hauled into court. She was charged with Child Endangerment and DCFS stepped in an put her 8 year old daughter, Mercedes, in protective custody.

Everybody in Pierson Station knew that Margaret weren’t quite right ever since she run off to marry that Gutierrez feller she met on her missionary trip to Ecuador. Then she upped and moved in with him in Miami. They seemed to do alright at first, judging by her letters home. They had work in Florida and Mercedes was born. But then Jorge, that was his name – that Gutierrez feller, got arrested for drunk and disorderly and got sent back to Ecuador cause he over stayed his visa.

Margaret came home then and got a job substitute teaching with a local district and a cheap place to stay house sitting for a local family while their mother was waiting to die in the Piatt County Nursing Home. As it happened there was little call for substitute teachers in the spring of 2003 and the old lady went and died so Margaret and Mercedes had to move out of the house so it could be sold. Out of money and out of hope, Margaret was not out of resources. She inherited a one-fifth interest in 80 acres from her father. She pitched a tent behind the corn-crib and strung a drop cord to power Mercedes little TV. They stayed there a week until her step-brother called the Sheriff – he had been farming the ground for the ten years since Margaret’s Daddy had passed over without ever accounting for the profits. Margaret was arrested – to protect the child, of course.

Anyway, that is my nominee for the Biggest Story of 2003 – the one that most illustrates life in our times.