Behind the Headlines

By Paula Wethington

Anyone who was in Southeast Michigan on the afternoon of Thursday Aug. 14, 2003, remembers the “big blackout.” This was a lengthy multi-state blackout that started in Ohio, and spread to the Detroit area and several other states to become the nation’s largest power outage.

Power availability in Monroe County was unpredictable – some people never lost electricity, while others were in the dark for three days.

Mercy Memorial Hospital canceled some surgeries. The Monroe Evening News had difficulties printing the next day’s edition. Local hotels and restaurants were already full with visitors because of a NASCAR race scheduled for that weekend at Michigan International Speedway. It was a struggle to put gas in the car, get cash out of the bank machine, or even make a phone call depending on your phone equipment.

The blackout happened a few hours before technical rehearsal for the Miss Monroe County Scholarship Pageant. There were just two days before 12 women would take the competition stage at Monroe High School auditorium. And the afterglow reception, which is a fundraiser for the program, was scheduled immediately after the pageant at McGeady’s Town Pub.

In the tradition of live theater, the decision was made that the show would go on.

Dione Oerther, pageant co-executive director, remembered the frantic plans that the board members and volunteers made to save the pageant. “It didn’t matter what we had to do,” she said. “You had girls who spent all summer getting ready.”

The backup site was the high school’s football stadium, where the sunlight would be the spotlights. Portable toilets were ordered. The production crew tried to think of every detail.

The power came back on at the high school campus about noon Friday. While that did solve the immediate problem, there wasn’t time to arrange a complete run-through of the show.

The production would take the stage without final cues and timing worked out.

Bobb Vergiels, a pageant volunteer whose real-life job is public information officer for DTE Energy, put on an electric company hat when he walked onto the stage to announce the start of the show.

“Somebody called Edison?” he said.

That night, Jill McCormick won the title of Miss Monroe County 2003.