Advance Morning News
It's Monday, December 30, 2024, and today we announce our 2024 Person of the Year.
Person of the Year
Like the turmoil that seems to be the driving narrative around so much of the country, our region saw its fair share of hatred, recriminations, abuse of government power, and left-right animosities in 2024.
It can be easy in such an environment to lose sight of the overall direction of society that rests just below the headlines that daily grab our attention.
The New Year offers a chance to step back and gain some perspective. This is what good news organizations help us to do. Yes, they hold governments to account and call out corruption where it exists. But they also place things in context and remind people of the bigger movements at play.
The Advance has been in the vanguard this year for telling the stories that expose the bad that occurs in government and nongovernment institutions alike.
We have also worked this year, however, to provide some perspectives on the larger trends that are shaping our region. And the people who are driving those trends. Our Person of the Year award was created to recognize these people and the outsize impact they are having on making our community stronger.
Four names were put forward as Person of the Year for the good and important work they are contributing to our society. The three who were not selected for the reward deserve recognition. They are, in alphabetical order:
Mary Becelia: Standing up to government wrongdoing, especially when one is on the receiving end of that action, requires grit, bravery, and a willingness to accept the consequences of speaking out. It’s a heavy burden that not many can bear. Yet, good government only happens when citizens stand up for their rights, and the rights of others. Mary Becelia is a model for how a citizen treated wrongly should respond to the abuse of power. After exhaustive efforts to give the Stafford County Board of Supervisors a chance to right privately the wrong they inflicted on her, Becelia went public with her story, eventually forcing the Board to publicly address their actions.
Federal Employees: The 7th Congressional District is “home to the second most federal government workers of any congressional district in Virginia and fourth most among all congressional districts in the country,” according to Rep. Abigail Spanberger’s office. To say that 2024 has been a difficult year for them would be an understatement. The elections this year shone a bright light on federal employees, and much of it wasn’t positive. Post-election, they stared down once again a possible shutdown, and they enter the New Year with real concerns about what will happen to them under the new administration. And through it all, they continue to get up and go to work every day.
Theodore Marcus: What began as a scandal over the swim team at Riverbend High School has turned into a story with statewide implications thanks to the doggedness of one private citizen. Theodore Marcus’s quest to get the information he sought in order to understand what led to the swim team debacle led him to file numerous FOIA requests with Spotsylvania County Public Schools. When select documents weren’t turned over, he went to court to force the people involved to do so. That request was shot down on a technicality dealing with how FOIA’s are served. Further investigation by Marcus, however, revealed that Virginia’s Judicial District Court Benchbook appears to be at odds with state law on the matter. The Virginia FOIA Advisory Council recently weighed in and suggested that legislation could resolve the issue. Marcus’ battle will move forward in the New Year.
Each of these nominees are models of civic engagement. They are the people who, at the end of the day, are the reason that our democracy works. Not all struggles, however, are about battling corruption.
The year 2024 marked the culmination of a decade-long effort by one couple to celebrate one of the great moments in the early history of our region. This couple is our 2024 People of the Year winner.
Read their story
Local Obituaries
To view local obituaries or to send a note to family and loved ones, please visit the link that follows.
Support Award-winning, Locally Focused Journalism
The FXBG Advance cuts through the talking points to deliver both incisive and informative news about the issues, people, and organizations that daily affect your life. And we do it in a multi-partisan format that has no equal in this region. Over the past year, our reporting was:
First to break the story of Stafford Board of Supervisors dismissing a citizen library board member for “misconduct,” without informing the citizen or explaining what the person allegedly did wrong.
First to explain falling water levels in the Rappahannock Canal.
First to detail controversial traffic numbers submitted by Stafford staff on the Buc-ee’s project
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And our newsroom is led by the most-experienced and most-awarded journalists in the region — Adele Uphaus (Managing Editor and multiple VPA award-winner) and Martin Davis (Editor-in-Chief, 2022 Opinion Writer of the Year in Virginia and more than 25 years reporting from around the country and the world).
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