May 25 Is National Missing Childrens' Day

In 1983, President Ronald Reagan declared May 25 National Missing Childrens' Day, to remind everyone that Etan Patz, who disappeared en route from his home to the school bus in New York, had not been found after disappearing in 1979. There are many unresolved missing persons cases involving children, and before Etan Patz's case, no one wanted to give these cases much publicity or notice. It was all too easy to pretend these things never happen, and that most American neighborhoods are "safe". Even today, it is often a formidable task to convince our media to air stories about missing children or keep their pictures in circulation until they are found.

The husband of a Kansas congresswoman even stated, after a child was abandoned by a teacher, four miles away from school, in Frankfort Kansas during a school activity, that it was a "good thing" that the child was left in a rural area, and not in her native Washington DC. His reasoning was that "those things don't happen in the country". The child's mother informed him that in Washington DC, there are cameras, eyewitnesses who care more about missing children than the pensions of dumbass teachers who "lose" them, and cell phone signals. In Northeast Kansas, a missing child cannot depend on those things. Also, the child's mother asked the husband of her representative if he had heard of more bodies being dumped in plain sight in urban areas post mortem, or "in the country", where evidence is harder to find?