Just a few weeks ago I was talking to my friend, Ellen, about growing up during World War II. She mentioned living near North Platte, Nebraska, and how the entire town seemed involved in running, manning and baking for the North Plate Canteen. Her description reminded me of a postcard of the North Platte Canteen my dad sent on his way to Salt Lake City in December, 1943. Ellen and I marveled together how a tiny town in the middle of nowhere made such a difference to so many lonely, bewildered servicemen.
The Canteen was conceived just eleven days after Pearl Harbor when a group of woman took cookies to the Union Pacific Train Station, hearing a troop train full of Nebraska servicemen would be traveling through. Turned out the servicemen were from Kansas, but Rae Wilson, one of the cookie ladies, declared she wasn’t going home with her cookies and offered them to the men. Later she wrote to the local paper and suggested this be a daily offering. And what a big offering it became as 55,000 women got involved serving over six million men during the war years. npcanteen.net
“I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.” (Matthew 25:40)
In another incident recorded by my dad, he talks of visiting a family in Salt Lake City for dinner. The USO set up such dinners with volunteering families:
January 2, 1943
We went into town to the U.S.O. From there they sent eight of us to a private home for supper. It was a nice home, a doctor, his wife, and daughter about 24 years old. They gave us chicken sandwiches, potato chips, pickles, date bars, celery, and a choice of coffee, coke, ginger ale or beer. They had a very nice fireplace and it sure was swell just sitting there. They also had a swell record player and some real nice records. One of them was Tommy Dorsey’s “Moonlight Becomes You.”
Simple acts: hot coffee and cookies served by smiling women, records playing Big Bands; giving comfort to a forlorn fellow far from home. My dad came from a tiny southwestern Michigan village where everyone knew each other. His caring radius of friends and family radiated from there. As friendly as he was he was still cast among thousands of strangers during the war. How beautiful for me now to extend a hug to all those who did that for my dad when he ventured outside his known radius.
No comments:
Post a Comment