A Marigold Minute

08/26/2026

🌾 ROOTS & BOOTS DRAGON JAM 🎸

Kick off the 2026 Pekin Marigold Festival with a night of live country music, great food, and good company at Avanti’s Event Center Fields.

📅 Friday, September 11 | 5–11 PM

Featuring:
Taylor Bruninga & the Bandits
Stone Cold Cowboys
Brushville
Nashville recording artist Jake Clayton
& a Mechnical Bull ($10 per ride)

Bring your lawn chair and settle in for an evening of live music, food trucks, and drinks.
Ticket required. No coolers or outside beverages.

🎟️ Tickets are ON SALE NOW: https://www.simpletix.com/e/roots-boots-dragon-jam-tickets-267595

08/26/2026

Thank you 🌼 Pekin's Tumble Jungle Bus -The T-shirt House - Pekin Downtown Auto - Little Ade's Bicycle shop & Strike Town Bowl for helping make this prize available 🌼🇺🇸

08/26/2026

CONGRATULATIONS Bradyn Haynes 🌼

Congratulations to PCHS junior Bradyn Hayes! Bradyn has been selected to be an IESA student photography intern. Bradyn will be a student photographer who captures exciting moments at IESA state events throughout the 2026–2027 school year.

08/26/2026

CONGRATULATIONS 🌼

The girls tennis team swept in stealing another 9-0 win against East Peoria tonight!

08/26/2026

KINDNESS IS CONTAGIOUS

08/25/2026

CHAPTER 90
A MARIGOLD MINUTE: WHEN TRUST WAS BROKEN 🌼🇺🇸
Some of the most troubling days of this chapter in Pekin's history were still ahead.
The year was 1932.
The Great Depression had already reached the Celestial City.
Farmers National Bank had closed its doors.
Families worried about money.
Businesses struggled.
Jobs were uncertain.
But before the year was over, the people of Pekin and Tazewell County would face something entirely different.
Something money couldn't explain.
Something that would shake people's trust in those who were supposed to protect them.
His name was Martin Virant.
He was an immigrant and a coal miner from East Peoria.
He was not a wealthy man.
He wasn't a politician.
He wasn't one of the prominent businessmen whose names appeared regularly in the newspaper.
He was simply a working man who would become caught in the middle of something terrible.
During the summer of 1932, authorities were investigating the death of a man named Lewis Nelan.
Nelan had been found badly injured near railroad tracks in East Peoria.
He later died.
Investigators wanted answers.
And they believed Martin Virant might have some.
Virant was taken into custody as a material witness.
He wasn't being held because he had been convicted of killing anyone.
Authorities wanted information from him.
He was brought to the Tazewell County Jail in Pekin.
There, deputies questioned him.
What happened during those hours would become one of the darkest controversies in Tazewell County history.
Virant continued to deny knowing anything that could solve the Nelan case.
But the questioning continued.
And somewhere along the way, questioning became something else.
Martin Virant was severely beaten.
Then came September 1, 1932.
Inside the Tazewell County Jail, Martin Virant was found hanging in his cell.
At first, it appeared that a prisoner had taken his own life.
That might have been where the story ended.
Except something wasn't right.
Virant's body showed injuries.
Questions began almost immediately.
How had he received them?
What had happened during his interrogation?
And was the hanging really what it appeared to be?
The answers became horrifying.
Two separate autopsies conducted by Pekin doctors, along with the examination of Chicago criminologist Dr. William D. McNally, reached the same conclusion.
Martin Virant had not died from hanging.
He had already been dead when his body was hanged in the jail cell.
He had suffered extensive injuries from a severe beating.
A man had entered the Tazewell County Jail alive.
He had been placed in the custody of officers entrusted with enforcing the law.
And now evidence indicated that after he died from injuries inflicted while in custody, someone had attempted to make his death look like su***de.
Public anger grew.
The story spread.
Newspapers throughout central Illinois carried it.
Reports traveled far beyond Tazewell County.
What had happened inside a jail cell in Pekin was no longer simply a local story.
People wanted answers.
They wanted an investigation.
And most of all, they wanted accountability.
The coroner's inquest drew enormous interest.
People crowded into Kuecks Funeral Home on Capitol Street.
Every seat was filled.
People stood in doorways and looked through windows.
Attorneys came.
Reporters came.
Ordinary citizens came.
They wanted to know what had happened to Martin Virant.
Witnesses testified that Virant had shown no injuries before being taken into custody.
Medical testimony described the terrible injuries found on his body.
Then came the coroner's jury's decision.
Martin Virant's death was ruled a homicide.
The jury concluded that he had died from injuries and shock caused by violence inflicted by someone other than himself while he was in the custody of the Tazewell County sheriff.
The grand jury was already investigating.
For five days, it concentrated on Virant's death.
Then came September 16.
The grand jury completed its investigation.
The following morning, the news broke.
Three men connected with the sheriff's office had been indicted for manslaughter in connection with Martin Virant's death.
Deputies Ernest Fleming and Charles Skinner were among them, along with Frank Lee, a railroad special agent who also held a deputy sheriff's commission.
The accusations were stunning.
But perhaps even more troubling was what happened afterward.
Despite the indictments, Sheriff James J. Crosby kept the deputies on duty.
Imagine how that must have felt to people reading their newspaper that morning.
The country was already suffering.
Families were frightened about jobs.
Banks were failing.
People were struggling to hold onto their homes and their savings.
And now their community was being forced to ask whether it could trust the very people charged with upholding the law.
Pekin had faced many kinds of tragedy before.
Fire could destroy a building.
Disease could take a life.
An explosion could tear through a factory.
A depression could empty a family's pocket.
But this was different.
This was about trust.
A jail is supposed to hold people safely until the law determines what happens next.
A badge carries authority.
But with authority comes something even more important.
Responsibility.
Martin Virant entered the Tazewell County Jail as a living man.
He deserved to leave it that way.
Whatever information authorities believed he possessed, whatever questions they wanted answered, and whatever suspicions surrounded the death they were investigating, one fact should have stood above everything else.
Martin Virant was still a human being.
And the law was supposed to protect him too.
That is what makes this story difficult to tell.
But difficult history is still history.
Throughout this journey, we have celebrated Pekin.
We have watched people build schools.
Hospitals.
Factories.
Parks.
Streets.
Bridges.
We have remembered soldiers.
Inventors.
Businessmen.
Workers.
Mothers.
Fathers.
And ordinary people who helped build the Celestial City.
But loving a community does not mean pretending every chapter of its history was beautiful.
Sometimes loving where we come from means having enough courage to remember the moments when we failed.
Because history isn't only supposed to make us proud.
Sometimes history is supposed to teach us.
Martin Virant never became famous for building anything in Pekin.
There is no great building carrying his name.
No park.
No bridge.
No monument standing prominently in the Celestial City.
Instead, his name survived because of what happened to him during several terrible days in 1932.
And perhaps remembering him gives us something important even now.
Authority should never make someone less accountable for the way another human being is treated.
It should make them more accountable.
By the autumn of 1932, the people of Pekin and Tazewell County wanted to know exactly what had happened behind the walls of their county jail.
The indictments had been handed down.
But the story was far from finished.
Trials would follow.
Arguments would be made.
Verdicts would eventually come.
And the controversy surrounding Martin Virant's death would continue into another year.
For now, one thing had already changed.
The people had begun asking questions.
And sometimes the first step toward protecting a community is simply refusing to look the other way.
Martin Virant deserved that much.
So does history. 🌼🇺🇸

08/25/2026

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
Benjamin Franklin

08/25/2026

🌼 A MARIGOLD MINUTE🌼
IF IT AIN'T BROKE, DON'T FIX IT — PART TWO
Last week, at around one o'clock in the morning, I sat down and wrote a story I never imagined would get the attention it did.
My wife Bonnie had just passed away.
I hadn't even laid my beautiful wife to rest.
But our granddaughter was one of the children affected by the transportation disaster that unfolded on District 108's first day of school.
I couldn't sleep.
And after more than four decades with Bonnie, I could almost hear her saying what she would have told me if she were lying beside me.
Tommy, get up and write the story.
So I did.
I called it:
IF IT AIN'T BROKE, DON'T FIX IT.
At the time, I told you this mess didn't begin at the bus stop.
It began when the City of Pekin decided to get out of the school bus business.
I still believe that.
The city knocked over the first domino.
But since writing that story, I've learned something that changes the rest of the picture considerably.
Because District 108 wasn't the only Pekin school district that received that news.
DISTRICT 303 GOT THE SAME NEWS.
Same city.
Same transportation department disappearing.
Same deadline approaching.
Same responsibility to figure out how they were going to safely transport children.
But District 303 and District 108 made two very different decisions.
And Pekin needs to know what those decisions were.
When District 303 learned the City of Pekin was getting out of the school bus business, it decided to establish its own transportation department.
But here's the important part.
THEY DIDN'T THROW AWAY THE PEOPLE WHO ALREADY KNEW HOW TO DO THE JOB.
District 303 publicly encouraged the experienced City of Pekin drivers and monitors to come work for them.
By March 2026, more than 40 former City of Pekin transportation employees had been hired by District 303.
Think about what that preserved.
Drivers who knew Pekin.
Drivers who knew the streets.
Drivers who knew the neighborhoods.
Drivers who knew the schools.
Drivers who knew the routes.
And in many cases, drivers who already knew the children standing at those bus stops.
District 303 also arranged to lease the City's existing Koch Street bus facility while establishing its transportation operation.
They had an entire year to prepare for the transition.
And they used it.
THEY PRESERVED EXPERIENCE.
District 108 chose another direction.
They outsourced transportation.
On February 23, 2026, District 108 accepted Alltown Bus Service's bid.
District documents estimated the first year of that contract at approximately:
$4.5 MILLION.
And here's something taxpayers ought to know.
District 108's previous transportation agreement with the City of Pekin for the 2025–26 school year was listed at approximately:
$4.2 MILLION.
So I'm going to ask the question again.
WHAT EXACTLY DID WE GAIN?
Because we certainly didn't gain a smooth transition.
The first day of school became such a transportation mess that District 108 canceled school for the following TWO DAYS.
Not because of snow.
Not because of ice.
Not because a tornado ripped through Pekin.
Transportation.
Those emergency days were specifically supposed to give District 108 and Alltown time to correct transportation problems, verify routes and schedules and prepare to safely resume school Monday.
Thursday passed.
Friday passed.
Then they had Saturday.
Then Sunday.
The district says approximately 2,100 families were contacted to confirm routes and times.
Then Monday morning arrived.
And the problems still weren't over.
One mother interviewed by 25News said she stood waiting for her kindergartner's bus.
IT NEVER CAME.
She eventually had to drive her child to school herself.
And District 108 still wasn't providing preschool bus transportation because the district said inaccuracies remained in those routes.
Let that sink in.
A disastrous opening day.
Two days of school canceled specifically to fix transportation.
An entire weekend.
And Monday morning a kindergartner's bus still never showed up.
Meanwhile, District 303 had faced the same deadline without experiencing this kind of opening transportation breakdown.
And now I want to talk about something else.
MONEY.
Because somebody might hear all this and think:
Maybe District 108 simply couldn't afford to do what District 303 did.
Maybe they didn't have the financial resources to build something different.
That's where District 108's own financial records become important.
According to its most recently completed audited financial statements, District 108 ended June 30, 2025 with approximately:
$24.5 MILLION IN CASH AND INVESTMENTS.
Let me immediately be fair.
That does NOT mean District 108 had a $24.5 million checking account that administrators could spend however they wanted.
School finances don't work that way.
Money is divided among different funds, and some dollars have specific purposes.
But here's another number.
The district's Transportation Fund itself ended that fiscal year with a fund balance of approximately:
$2.9 MILLION.
And its Working Cash Fund contained approximately:
$8.2 MILLION.
District 108 was not a financially collapsing school district desperately searching under the couch cushions for enough money to transport children.
Its financial profile received the Illinois State Board of Education's highest general designation:
RECOGNITION.
So now I have an entirely different question.
IF THE RESOURCES EXISTED, WHY WAS PRESERVING THE EXPERIENCED LOCAL TRANSPORTATION WORKFORCE NOT WORTH THE INVESTMENT?
District 303 apparently thought experience was worth preserving.
Why didn't District 108?
Why wasn't every reasonable effort made to keep the people who already knew these routes?
Why weren't those drivers and monitors treated as an asset instead of knowledge Pekin could afford to lose?
And most importantly:
WHAT WOULD IT HAVE COST DISTRICT 108 TO DO WHAT 303 DID?
That's a number I think taxpayers deserve to see.
Because this isn't simply about how much money a school district has.
It's about PRIORITIES.
A reserve is responsible.
Planning for emergencies is responsible.
Protecting taxpayers is responsible.
I don't have a problem with any government body being careful with our money.
I WANT them to be careful with it.
But there comes a point when taxpayers have every right to ask:
WHAT ARE WE SAVING THE MONEY FOR?
Because surely one of the reasons we collect taxes in the first place is to provide essential services to the people paying them.
And I can't think of many services more important than safely getting a six-year-old child to school and back home.
If maintaining millions in reserves becomes more important than investing enough money to make sure children are reliably transported, then I think taxpayers have every right to question those priorities.
And I'm one of those taxpayers.
My children are grown.
I don't have children attending District 108 anymore.
But part of my property taxes still supports public education.
And you know what?
IT SHOULD.
Educating children benefits an entire community.
But that doesn't mean taxpayers surrender their right to ask questions when they write the check.
Quite the opposite.
If you're taking our money, we have every right to ask how you're spending it.
And if you're saving substantial amounts of it while a transportation system fails badly enough that children miss rides and school itself gets canceled...
WE DAMN SURE HAVE THE RIGHT TO ASK WHY.
This isn't about attacking teachers.
Our teachers didn't make this decision.
This isn't about attacking bus drivers.
Some of these Alltown drivers may have been handed unfamiliar routes, inaccurate information and schedules they had nothing to do with creating.
Treat those drivers with respect.
This is about DECISION-MAKING.
District 303 made decisions.
District 108 made decisions.
The City of Pekin made decisions.
Alltown made decisions.
And now families are living with the results.
Last week, I put much of the responsibility on the City of Pekin because the city made the original decision to end its school transportation operation.
Knowing what I know today, I need to add something.
The city created the situation both districts had to solve.
But District 303 showed us that what happened next wasn't inevitable.
303 had a choice.
108 had a choice.
303 preserved experienced local transportation employees.
108 outsourced.
And that's why this comparison matters so much.
SAME CITY.
SAME DEADLINE.
SAME OLD TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM DISAPPEARING.
TWO SCHOOL DISTRICTS.
TWO DIFFERENT APPROACHES.
TWO VERY DIFFERENT OPENINGS TO THE SCHOOL YEAR.
Maybe there are explanations for every one of these decisions.
If there are, I sincerely want to hear them.
District 108 is welcome to explain why outsourcing was determined to be the better option.
Tell us what alternatives were considered.
Tell us whether keeping the former City of Pekin drivers was considered.
Tell us what that option would have cost.
Tell us what taxpayers are expected to save over this five-year contract.
And tell parents exactly when they can expect every eligible child to be picked up and brought home reliably.
Those aren't hostile questions.
Those are accountability questions.
And taxpayers deserve answers.
Last week I asked:
WHAT EXACTLY DID WE SAVE?
After learning what District 303 did, I'm asking something even more important.
WHAT DID DISTRICT 303 UNDERSTAND THAT DISTRICT 108 DIDN'T?
Because our children should never be where government discovers whether its decisions were good ones.
They shouldn't be standing at a bus stop waiting for that answer.
And parents shouldn't have to discover it when the bus never comes.
Maybe our parents and grandparents really did have it right.
New isn't automatically better.
Outsourcing isn't automatically cheaper.
Money sitting in an account doesn't transport a single child.
And sometimes experience is worth paying for.
Especially when we're talking about our children.
IF IT AIN'T BROKE...
DON'T FIX IT.
🌼 A Marigold Minute Tommy McClary Pekin, Illinois 🌼

08/25/2026

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
Benjamin Franklin 🌼🇺🇸

08/25/2026

SUPPORT OUR LOCAL BUSINESSES 🌼🇺🇸