Once Upon a Town; The Miracle of the North Platte Canteen
New York, N.Y. William Morrow (An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers), 2002. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. [6], 264, [2] pages. Format is approximately 5.25 inches by 7.5 inches. Minor cover wear and soiling. Within two weeks of the Canteen's last day of operation, its officers had typed up a final audit that was as devoted to exacting particulars as had been the Canteen itself. Dated April 13, 1946, the audit reported that the bank balance as of March 1 had been $4,181.22, and that the balance at the close of operations was $3,033,56. Expenses during that last month had included $766.29 for sugar and fruit, $19 for eggs, and $21.00 for flowers for retiring Union Pacific Railroad president William F. Jeffers, who had donated the space at the train station for the Canteen. The audit conceded that so much food was donated to the Canteen by the people of the area that no accurate accounting was possible. The committee voted that the $3,033.56 on hand be used for the benefit of veterans in hospitals. Robert Bernard Greene Jr. (born March 10, 1947) is an American journalist and author. He worked for 24 years for the Chicago Tribune newspaper, where he was a columnist. Bob Greene as a magazine writer, he has been lead columnist for Life and Esquire; as a contributing correspondent for ABC News Nightline. Greene has written books on subjects including Michael Jordan, Alice Cooper, and U.S. presidents. In 1977, Greene won the National Headliner Award for writing the previous year's best column. In 1995, Greene was named Illinois Journalist of the Year. In the same year he was awarded the Peter Lisagor Award for Public Service Journalism for his reporting on courts failing children in need. On December 17, 1941, North Platte residents gathered at the Union Pacific Depot because they heard that a troop train carrying their own boys – Company D of the Nebraska National Guard – would be coming through. When the troop train stopped, it was Company D all right, but of the Kansas National Guard, not Nebraska. After a few moments of awkward silence, the townsfolk surged forward to share their gifts with the Kansas boys – after all, they were someone’s children, and away from home at Christmas time. That night, young Rae Wilson went home and penned a letter to the editor asking North Platte to follow the lead of their ancestors in World War I and open a Canteen at the depot. Little did she know that she would be starting an endeavor that would last for 54 months, involve 12,000 volunteers and serve more than 6 million service men and women. In search of "the best America there ever was," bestselling author and award-winning journalist Bob Greene finds it in a small Nebraska town few people pass through today—a town where Greene discovers the echoes of the most touching love story imaginable: a love story between a country and its sons. During World War II, American soldiers from every city and walk of life rolled through North Platte, Nebraska, on troop trains en route to their ultimate destinations in Europe and the Pacific. The tiny town, wanting to offer the servicemen warmth and support, transformed its modest railroad depot into the North Platte Canteen. Every day of the year, every day of the war, the Canteen—staffed and funded entirely by local volunteers—was open from five a.m. until the last troop train of the day pulled away after midnight. Astonishingly, this remote plains community of only 12,000 people provided welcoming words, friendship, and baskets of food and treats to more than six million GIs by the time the war ended. In this poignant and heartwarming eyewitness history, based on interviews with North Platte residents and the soldiers who once passed through, Bob Greene tells a classic, lost-in-the-mists-of-time American story of a grateful country honoring its brave and dedicated sons. Derived from a Kirkus review: Veteran Chicago Tribune columnist Greene takes a lively, affectionate look at small-town America through the lens of a most unusual institution. North Platte, Nebraska, is one of those places that flashes by on the interstate, a typical wayside venue of fast-food restaurants, chain stores, and a decaying downtown. Decades ago, the town made much more of an impression upon thousands of young American men who, passing through on troop trains en route to war in Europe or the Pacific, were treated at its station canteen to cigarettes, fresh food, hot coffee, and plenty of hospitality. “This was not something orchestrated by the government,” Greene writes. “This was not paid for with public money. All the food, all the services, all the hours of work were volunteered by private citizens and local businesses”—with, he adds, the exception of a five-dollar donation made by President Roosevelt, who had heard about the place and wanted to pay his respects. In the course of this searching portrait, Greene wanders around North Platte, visiting with elderly veterans of the canteen and WWII, examining how the citizens’ generosity and caring made a world of difference to all those young men so many years ago. Along the way, pointedly but subtly, Greene contrasts the North Platte and America of yesteryear with what they have become today. Asking himself whether an American town today would do what North Platte did then. This pleasingly modest and meaningful account of life on the homefront deserves the widest audience. Condition: Very good.
Keywords: North Platte Canteen, Union Pacific, World War II, Home Front, Railroad Depot, Nebraska, Hospitality, Volunteers, Small Town America, Soldiers, William Jeffers
ISBN: 0060081961
[Book #82444]
Price: $25.00