Readers of the Marion County Record in rural Kansas won’t be reading 98-year-old Joan Meyer’s folksy “Memories” column this week. Or ever again.

Missing will be the thread that stitches the community together with reports of past gladness and laments of sadness about life lived in the prairie town of Marion, population 2,000, in remote east-central Kansas.

Her publisher-editor son reports she died late Saturday.

He attributed her death to fright from surprise police raids Friday morning at the paper’s office and at their private home — in quest of evidence to support what press lawyers describe as an illegal search and seizure warrant.

“She was stressed beyond her limits,” said son Eric Meyer. “She was in good health for her age. But she could not eat or sleep after the raid,” something that had never happened in her half-century at the paper, most of it alongside her late husband, a former top editor.

Her 69-year-old son’s love of a hometown paper’s ability to reflect and encourage a sense of community through local news that readers value moved the family to acquire the Marion County Record in 1998.

Eric’s journalism journey included 20 years at the Milwaukee Journal and more years than that as a journalism professor at the University of Illinois. His experience put the paper above and beyond a weekly’s expectations.

Meyer had never experienced what happened last week in five decades of practicing and teaching journalism — a development he vowed to fight with legal filings against “the people who did this,” including seeking financial damages.

Without a moment’s notice, America’s free press rights turned into a battle front in the most unlikely place, precipitated by a local justice system’s scorn for a small town newspaper just doing its job of covering local news without fear or favor.

Police seized today’s tools of journalism: computers, hard drives and data servers with reporters’ notes and work product, cellphones and various documents and records. Joan Meyer’s home Alexis service went dark when police confiscated its router.

“They showed up simultaneously at the paper and at our home with a search warrant,” said Meyer, who co-owned with his mother the weekly and two affiliated county news outlets. “They can’t do that in America.”

It jolted First Amendment lawyers and journalism organizations.They rallied in support of Meyer and the Record, expressing horror at a court-approved police raid on the smallest of American newspapers. They feared a plan to discredit the newspaper.

Normally, newspapers are served with subpoenas requesting records. Raids are extremely rare due to laws and court decisions protecting against them. The paper’s initial request went unfulfilled for the affidavit required for the search warrant.

Al Cross, director emeritus of the University of Kentucky’s Institute for Rural Journalism, said every journalist and free press advocate should speak out against the attack on the Marion County Record.

“This doesn’t happen in this country,” said Cross. “Raiding a newspaper and the publisher’s home is far beyond the pale. This case is the worst in modern day newspaper experiences.”

Yet so it goes elsewhere. Last March, a rural paper in McCurtain County, Okla., was the center of national attention over a voice recording of county officials talking about destroying the paper’s building and killing reporters while also making hateful comments about Black people.

And in Arkansas, the Madison County Record fought against the Huntsville School Board over the paper’s investigation into a cover-up of sexual assault by boys on the junior high basketball team.

The point is anti-press rhetoric has also whiplashed small town America at a time when local newspapers are more needed than ever. They are a cornerstone of rural democracy.

That’s why they assign reporters to cover government meetings, the police, the courts, everyday local life and death — and commit journalism holding local orbits of power and influence accountable.

To ignore that reality invites the type of unlawful police raid Friday at the Marion County Record, an appalling effort to silence the paper’s journalism.