Other than brief visits about our families at Kansas Press Association meetings, I didn’t know Joan Meyer well. Her husband, on the other hand, was a legend in the Kansas newspaper community. I first met him when I was a young reporter for the Salina Journal and stopped by his office in Marion to introduce myself.

Bill, who would go on to be inducted into the Kansas Newspaper Hall of Fame ( Joan should be there, too), welcomed me, as I’m sure he has many others over the years, by showing me the bullet hole in the window behind his desk he found one morning when he arrived for work. I don’t remember the details, except Bill considered it a badge of honor for a small town newspaper publisher.

Later, when I became involved with the Ellsworth County Independent, Bill and I both served on a citizen advisory committee organized by Jerry Moran. Bill also would sometimes share resumes he received when I was looking for a new employee.

I didn’t always agree with Bill’s editorial policy, but the Meyers were wonderful role models for a newbie publisher whose goal was to support her community as well as they supported Marion and Marion County.

Bill died in 2006, leaving Joan and their son Eric, a retired journalism professor, to operate the family newspaper, the Marion County Record.

Under their leadership, the Record has been named top newspaper in its circulation category for the past three years by the state press association.

That’s one of the many reasons this past weekend’s events have been so hard to accept.

Joan, 98, collapsed and died Saturday, less than 24 hours after raids by local authorities on her home and newspaper office that by Monday morning had been reported and discussed across the nation and even overseas.

I won’t go into detail on events that led to what many — myself included — consider bad decisions on the part of authorities, but if you somehow missed the story, go to Kansasreflector.com (or see story, A2). Or better yet, get the story firsthand and subscribe to the Marion County Record. The e-mail address is marioncountyrecord.com.

I’ve rewritten this column a dozen times, mostly because the news from Marion County continues to evolve as only an ongoing story in a small town can. Marion, which is north of Wichita, has about 2,000 residents.

On Sunday, a news release from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation said an investigation into alleged illegal access and dissemination of confidential criminal justice information was requested more than a week ago by the Marion Police Department and the Marion County attorney.

The KBI “believes very strongly that freedom of the press is a vanguard of American democracy. Without free speech and free press, our society is not likely to see appropriate accountability of public officials,” Director Tony Mattivi said.

“But another principle of our free society is equal application of the law” and the KBI is obligated to investigate credible allegations of illegal activity.

No one is above the law, whether it’s a “public official or a representative of the media.”

Fair enough. Let’s keep in mind, however, that the press is specifically mentioned in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Many of the stories about the Marion raids quoted legal experts as saying authorities had no right to do what they did. In a statement Sunday, the University of Kansas reaffirmed its commitment to the First Amendment and its freedom of press protection.

Oddly enough, only a couple of hours before the Marion story broke Saturday, long-time friend Tom Buffington of Marquette texted me a column written by Dana Milbank in the Washington Post. The title was “The country has come apart. Rural America has a cure.” In it, the writer praised the importance of small newspapers and their dedication to their communities, even when the news is sometimes bad.

“At a time when hooligans have hijacked the national discourse with disinformation and paranoia, the Rappahannock News operates in a calmer place where the slow rhythms of rural life are newsworthy — and where, regardless of political views, its readers are unified by a powerful sense of community,” Milbank wrote of his local newspaper. “In tiny Rappahannock County, the newspaper still serves as the hymnal of our civic religion. It’s a tradition that we need to rescue in rural America — and emulate in our cities.”

He didn’t mention the Marion County Record or the Ellsworth County Independent-Reporter or the dozens of other weeklies and small dailies that dot the landscapes of rural Kansas and America, but he could. These serve as part of the fabric that bind their communities.

It’s not a stretch to say this whole complicated mess in Marion County eventually will be heard in court. Eric Meyer has said he plans to file a lawsuit in federal court over what appears to be a case of outrageous overreach on the part of Marion police officers. Given Sunday’s press release from the KBI, state involvement also appears to be a possibility.

If any good comes from this, it will be the reminder to the public at large that newspapers — despite their struggles — are important not only to their communities, but to Democracy as a whole. We need to support them.

Freedom of the press is more than a suggestion. It is necessary to the well being of this country and those who live here.

We should all be concerned about what happens in Marion County. Linda Mowery-Denning Senior Writer