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  The junior senator returns to Centralia and reminisces about growing up in southern Illinois After about an hour of drinking, making small talk about local political races, and prognosticating on the outcome of the following day’s election, the crowd in the banquet room of the Centralia House Restaurant abruptly bursts into applause when tonight’s guest of honor, Roland Burris, arrives just past 6 o’clock.
Burris, sporting a dark blue suit with a red handkerchief placed in the pocket compliments a red-and-navy diagonalstriped silk tie, glides through the cramped room trading hugs with relatives, friends and other well-wishers expressing how wonderful they think it is that the local boy who made good finally made it back home. It’s his first trip to his hometown since Rod Blagojevich thumbed his nose at critics and appointed Burris to the Senate seat left vacant when then President-elect Barack Obama resigned in November.
Burris himself thumbed his nose at those insisting that he not accept the appointment, at U.S. Senate Democrats who initially refused to seat him, and at those demanding that he resign once it was revealed that Burris failed to disclose to an Illinois legislative committee that Blagojevich had asked Burris to raise money before making the appointment.
None of that matters here, not tonight. If Burris is a legend in his own mind, Centralia is to blame. To these people, and maybe only to these people, the former Illinois state comptroller and attorney general is a hero. “I’m so proud of Centralia,” he says. “I tell people about this town. I don’t think there’s any other town like it in the country.” Centralia, he likes to say, is 110 miles south of Springfield, 110 miles north of Cairo, 65 miles east of St. Louis, and 63 miles from the Indiana border and, “that’s why we named ourselves Centralia — we’re the heart of southern Illinois.” continued on page 14 |
