As 2021 came to a close, The Sentinel staff looked back at all the stories in the Holland area. COVID-19 once again dominated headlines locally and around the world — and the pandemic was a constant backdrop to the issues and events that affected our community.
Parents and businesses were rocked by restrictions, scrambled to find ways to continue safely operating and struggled to find employees as people left the workforce in droves.
Meanwhile, the country continued to see the aftershocks of George Floyd’s murder, sparking heated debates about racial justice, critical race theory and the role statues play in culture and history.
Locally, our staff looked back on our most noteworthy stories of the year. Out of 30 nominees, we voted on what we felt were the most important stories of 2021.
We are grateful for your readership and support, and for your subscriptions (digital and in print). It’s been a trying year, to be sure, but it’s been a great year for journalism.
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As the pandemic stretched into its second year, beleaguered health experts kept pushing the public to fight the overall fatigue everyone felt and to stay vigilant with social distancing, masks and receiving vaccines. Then came the delta and later omicron variants, thwarting the progress science and health workers were making to restore public health. As most schools returned to in-person learning, debates about mask mandates raged among aggrieved parents and, in the absence of the statewide mandates that headlined 2020, public health officers and school boards became targets for criticism. Meanwhile, political polarization deepened in Michigan and no one is quite sure what post-pandemic normalcy will mean, especially in a polarized political landscape.
In a truly bizarre tale of one Holland restaurant owner refusing to comply with state-mandated COVID-19 restrictions that started in 2020, Marlena Pavlos-Hackney’s campaign for “freedom” highlighted a legal network ill-equipped to deal with a deadly pandemic and its tentacle effect on local businesses. As Pavlos-Hackney openly flouted any “government agency orders,” including the county health department, officials seemed stymied to prevent the eatery from remaining open for dine-in service with no masks or social distancing in sight. After months of warnings, cease-and-desist letters and a bench warrant, Pavlos-Hackney was intractable and became a darling with far-right news outlets until she was arrested in March and spent several days in the county jail. The restaurant finally closed as the restaurateur sorted through her numerous legal issues, and the eatery reopened in September to huge crowds.
The Holland area saw a mass exodus of long-time public school superintendents in 2021. Although none cited the specific demands of the effects COVID-19 has had on how to educate students while minimizing infections, it had to play some part as six of the 11 superintendents in the OAISD have retired since the 2019-2020 school year — OAISD’s Pete Haines, Holland’s Brian Davis, Zeeland’s Cal DeKuiper, West Ottawa’s Tom Martin, Jenison’s Tom TenBrink and Coopersville’s Ron Veldman. With them, they took a combined 63 years of experience — not counting time spent by Haines, Martin and DeKuiper as superintendents in other ISDs. Holland went through further turmoil when it was announced in late November that new superintendent Shanie Keelean was departing the district after a mere five months.
As COVID-19 canceled events around the world, and large gatherings were scratched to prevent infection spread, none was more devastating than the loss of Tulip Time in 2020. The 92-year-old festival has seen times of war and peace — and last year was the first time it was disrupted after resuming post World War II in 1946. Because the festival is a nonprofit, there were a few precarious months where officials were worried that without a previous year’s festival, a next one would not be financially viable. With careful planning and easement of state restrictions, the beloved festival returned with numbers that rivaled pre-COVID 2019’s 53,000 visitors, despite Windmill Island having to turn away guests during the festival’s opening weekend to abide by the state’s 1,000-person limit on outdoor gatherings.
One of the only topics outside of politics and coronavirus in 2021 was what local communities can do to fight the effects of climate change. As domestic energy prices soared, companies and municipalities looked for ways to lower costs and find alternatives to diversify their energy portfolios. Car companies announced lofty goals of all-electric fleets in the coming decades and there’s movement in states to eliminate new gas utility hookups, changing the game. Holland followed suit by setting more aggressive short-term goals for energy use with a predicted outcome of reaching 12 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions per capita by 2030, half of the city’s CO2 emissions in 2005. If successful, the SDT calculated Holland’s greenhouse gas emissions could drop from the baseline 2010 level of 24 metric tons of carbon dioxide per capita to 12.25 MT/capita by 2030.
One of the most maligned and misunderstood efforts by the city of Holland in 2021 was its effort to gauge public support for changing its zoning code to help ease the housing crunch seen not just locally, but regionally. As Ottawa County continues to be one of the fastest-growing counties in the state, local officials and businesses continue to struggle to accommodate residents and workers with affordable housing. The local effort aimed to build or convert homes into duplexes, triplexes and four-unit homes in residential areas, but a massive backlash of established residents claimed the move would ruin their investments by increasing density. Ultimately, city council removed the most controversial parts of the ordinance and approved a watered-down version of the local law.
An unexpected conversation at the local level in 2021 was when parents or citizens began commenting on their opposition to Critical Race Theory in local public schools. Critical race theory, CRT for short, actually isn’t a part of the curriculum in Michigan’s K-12 schools. Rather, it’s a scholarly framework, developed in the 1970s by academics, which argues American society actively promotes white supremacy by promulgating racial disparities through laws and policies. Most public concerns around CRT are rooted in a lack of understanding of what it actually is, with the concept of diversity, equity and inclusion often being lumped in with it. Although both involve race, DEI work is about providing students with equitable opportunities and ensuring all students are prepared.
Some parents returning their children to in-person learning for the 2020-21 school year had no tolerance for any more COVID-19 mitigation efforts in schools — particularly mask mandates approved by local districts and county health departments, in the absence of state mandates that dominated much of the previous year. Threats were made against public health officials as well as elected board members, and a small, but vocal, faction insisted that mandates be ignored if put into place — something all public officials are not legally allowed to do. And misunderstandings of how public policies work from the micro to macro level fueled the fire. In the end, most districts opted to adopt augmented policies until a vaccine was approved for the 5- to 11-year-old age group, which finally happened on Nov. 2.
One of the few stories of 2021 that brought a smile to our faces was that of the arrival of a Popeyes chicken franchise in Holland Township. Devoted fans of The Sentinel Facebook page will recall that one “superfan,” Javier Valdez, would find a way to work into nearly every post of ours that a Popeyes chicken could, should or would be relevant to a particular location. For nearly a decade, he opined how needed this chain was in the Holland area, and when we learned that his dream was coming true, it was only kismet that we recalled his fervent wish for this reality. We are just delighted that his fried chicken dreams have come true. It was a wonderful moment of levity for the year.
One of the more unexpected conversations locally in 2020 continued into 2021, when a controversial statue in Allendale Township sparked outrage over racial stereotype depictions. The statue is a Civil War memorial piece placed in the township’s Garden of Honor that features Union and Confederate soldiers standing back to back, with a slave child kneeling in between, holding a tablet that reads “freedom to slaves.”
Some groups have argued that the Confederate soldier and the slave child depiction are offensive, which sparked several heated meetings — with often racially insensitive public comments. Despite a year of discussion, protests and deliberation — and a commission-endorsed committee that recommended the statue’s removal — the Allendale Board voted 5-2 to keep the controversial statue; it has been vandalized several times since. As the year came to a close, a federal lawsuit alleged the township violated the free speech rights of residents by blocking their purchase of commemorative bricks with messages calling for the removal of the statue.
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