The following is an article that appeared in the
Neodesha newspaper in 1971. It was written by Shirley Hanson. I have scanned in
the article and tried to correct as many scanner errors as possible. This
article was written during the Neodesha Centennial. Kerry Elkins 3/2006
City Canteen Was One of a Kind
By Shirley Hanson
June 10, 1971
One of the most worthwhile groups from Neodesha's past was I the City Canteen that operated here during World War II and the Korean Conflict. The following story is the result of several interviews with one of the chairmen of that group, Mrs. Jack Starrett.
It was an afternoon in June or July, 1941, when Loraine Greenwood and Mary Kate Johnson went to the train depot to mail letters. A troop train happened to pull in while they were there and the ladies were asked by some of the boys if they would go and get them some candy, magazines and cigarettes. Mrs. Johnson remembers, "When the merchants found out what we were doing, they were more than generous with their supplies to help get the City Canteen started". Thus began a service of love that was to span several years. The canteen was an opportunity for everyone to participate, even the school children.
Captains in the original group formed by Mmes. Greenwood and Johnson were Mmes. Ed Metcalf, Edward Jones, Lowell Sharp, Harold Snow, H. J. Schnetzler and Marie Shipley. Each captain had helpers who were assigned a day each week to meet the trains. Mayor L. J. Catlin took the first necessary step by writing the President of Frisco Railroad, who gave permission to conduct the canteen at the station. He granted them the use of a large corner of the baggage room for the magazines they kept on hand, as many as 5,000 at a time. The Missouri Pacific also granted them space - a shelf in their baggage room.
The Mo-Pac trains came in only at noon and in the evening 3 or 4 times a week and Mrs. S. E. Simpson was the lady in charge of meeting each one at noon. Glenn Utt furnished a large roll top desk at the Frisco station in which the ladies kept supplies. One woman stayed in the morning and another in the afternoon in case a troop train came in before other workers could get there. This was a necessity because the troop movements were secret and railroad officials could not let the canteen know when a train would arrive. Sometimes for days at a time there would be no trains; then there might be several in one day.
How were they able to meet the trains at all? Through the services of two of the most important people to the canteen - Mrs. Benefield who lived in the last house on south 4th Street and Mrs. Joe McAninch, west of town. When a train passed one of these homes, the lady living there would immediately call Mrs. Johnson, and later Mrs. Starrett, who activated the workers. After Mrs. Benefield's death, Mrs. Gerald Pettit took over her job. Mrs. McAninch was always a faithful watchwoman and when she had to be away from home Mrs. Lowell Sharp or Mrs. Bruce Turney would call from the west. During the Korean Conflict, Mrs. J. H. Gidney also became a caller.
Some of these workers, who had to be ready to go at a second's notice, were Mmes. Dewey Ayers, Raymond Hedrick, G. E. Klock, Earl Webb, J. E. Starrett, Ralph Moulton, Irwin Shoemaker, Frances McDaniel, Bob McCollum, Clora Pumphrey, Bert Lee, Truman Justice, Annabelle Reames, Margaret Bradfield, Rena Powell, Kate Pingrey and Miss Genevieve Mong (now Mrs. Ray Garrett).
Letters were written to civic organizations, lodges and schools, requesting funds, and they all responded generously. Fruit jars were placed in stores, restaurants and the city office and Mrs. Starrett said, "You'd be surprised how much money we got. It was truly a community affair".
Glenn Gidney and Tom Hopkins made signs for the jars and also made arm bands for the canteeners. School children gave literally thousands of comic books and Mrs. Starrett said, "The boys liked anything that would give them a laugh".
People gave magazines by the hundreds and items were brought
by car loads from
O. D. Partington kept them suppied with decks of cards. The first big donation the Metro Club made was 5,000 aspirins which the Episcopalian Guild sacked individually. Mrs. Pingrey, Viola Koutz, Franciska Winters and Mrs. Edith Searles suppied the canteen with crossword puzzles, at least 2,000, they had mounted on cardboard. Scott Knaus and many others gave postcards and they were bought by the hundreds. Mrs. C. A. Stafford "was wonderful the entire time" and Paul Webb gave assistance.
A booklet entitled "Hi Fellas" was made up by the high school Student Congress for distribution to the servicemen. Since many questions were asked of the canteen workers, such as: "How is Neodesha pronounced?", "What are its industries?" The booklets, containing the answers to these and many other bits of information, were very useful. "Hi Fellas" closed with, "Well, maybe this gives you a fairly good picture of my home town. I suspect you do a lot of thinking about your own home and friends. I kinda get a funny feeling when I know that next year I too may be leaving dear old Neody. But the way I look at it is we all have our jobs, and the earlier we get at them the sooner we can all be back home. Right now my job is geometry, and I think I'd better say so long for this time. Just want you to know we're proud of you, fellas". The writing committee was composed of Yvonne Martinson, Twyla Talbert and Bette Klock. David Weatherby was president of the senate of Student Congress and Bryce Orr of the House of Representatives.
Mrs. Starrett was enthusiastic about the railroad men, "They were all perfectly wonderful in every way possible". C. G. Smirl was agent at Frisco and A. H. "Brownie" Brown at the Missouri Pacific.
Mrs. Johnson and Mrs. Greenwood retired as chairmen in 1943 because both were expecting babies, and Mrs. Starrett took charge April 12 of that year. Her first introduction to what her life was to be for the rest of the war and the Korean Conflict came soon after. She had invited two couples for dinner one Sunday evening and had her steaks ready to serve when a troop train came in. She laughingly recalled, ''We went immediately to meet the train so you can imagine the condition of the steaks when we dined. The trains had a way of coming in at the most inopportune times".
Mrs. Ralph Moulton joined the canteen soon after Mrs. Starrett took over. Of her "right hand", Mrs. Starrett said, "She was absolutely wonderful. There was never a time she didn't go (to the trains) and she could put the boys at ease instantly".
The Neodesha Printing Co. printed postcards with
"compliments of City Canteen,
Another wrote, "I come from
Perhaps there is a nearing-middle-age man in Neodesha who remembers giving some Marines a dog back in 1944. One letter received from a serviceman inquired about an anonymous boy who had given them a "beagle hound". They wished to give him a souvenir but the train pulled out before they could. The Marine said the boy, about 10 or 11, rode his bike about 4 or 5 blocks away to get the dog. Mrs. Starrett has been curious about the boy's identity, so if it was you, why don't you give her a call.
Mrs. Starrett reported they "saw things that were pathetic, comical, and heartbreaking" and tried to give me a picture of each. Although she related many, because of limited space we can not publish all, but several must not be left out.
One of the most pathetic was watching young servicemen who were expectant fathers, as they visited with Mrs. George (Charlotta) Lewman and Mrs. Lowell Sexton and their babies. The women's husbands were away in the service and they took the babies to see the train almost every night. Mrs. Starrett said, "You could feel the anxiety of the young soldiers" at being away from their wives at such an important time in their lives.
One of the most disgusting scenes was women passengers pushing the servicemen aside to grab at the canteen baskets to get cigarettes, although the men were courteous enough to stand back and let them.
Ralph Kennedy, chairman of the county-wide United War Fund, was very interested in the canteen. In 1944 the canteen received 13 percent of the $342 collected in this fund. As an example of how much was done, the purchases by the canteen one August included 7,000 post cards, 7,500 folders of matches, 17 cartons of cigarettes, 4 dozen boxes of candy and 5 large boxes of cookies.
Although the women did not give supplies to prisoners of war, they did give to the guards on these prison trains. One terrifying experience, Mrs. Starrett related, involved a train carrying Italian-African Brownshirts. As she walked along beside the train they started hissing at her and she went back to ask the guard to accompany her. He laughingly explained the Italians' hiss meant the same thing as an American's wolf whistle.
One trainload Mrs. Starrett considered a bit snobbish was full of easterners "who had Bostonian accents" and seemed to look on Neodesha as in the sticks. When they asked, "Where are the Indians?" she squelched them with, "You know, this is the first train that ever came through here and they were so frightened when they saw you they ran over the hill!"
The first train ever boarded by the workers was one of the saddest. It was a car of mental patients sidetracked in the Mo-Pac yards. She said, "I will never forget two huge men with arms folded and absolutely no sense of recognition as we passed them our supplies. The corpsman said they had to feed them, take them to the restroom, dress them, and at night sometimes aboard ship they screamed until the corpsmen felt they'd become patients themselves". Many trains of wounded were met and the chairman of that time said, "It would break your heart to see them looking out the windows".
Helpers Mrs. Walter Thompson and Mrs. McAninch tried to get young women and high school girls to assist as they were "peppy and fun for the boys to visit with". Among others, there were Violet Aim, Delores Page, Willa Dean Mitchell, two Brown girls, Mary Alice Avers, Arietta Erickson, Anne Krudwig, Eleanor Louise Starrett, Fern Certain, Mrs. John Classen, Beverly Blackwell and Mrs. Fred Cook, and teachers Misses Deal and Kaufman.
Other experiences included the Starretts taking a soldier to the hospital after he had fallen against a doorknob and split his eyeball (he was then flown to Olathe and on to Great Lakes Hospital); feeding and then having Mr. Johnson take several stranded here by floods to Kansas City; the Starretts having a veteran, who was stranded here without funds, to dinner and the canteen paying for his bus fare to Wichita, his destination.
As the war neared the end in
The canteen served over 200,000 men during World War II, probably a feat unduplicated by any other community in the country, large or small. The canteen had a balance of $84 at the end of the war and it was left in the bank even though no one could know that a few years later there would've been a need for it again.
On August 25, 1950 at 9:30 a.m., the canteen was reactivated
when the first trainload of servicemen in the Korean conflict arrived in
Neodesha. Mrs. Starrett was notified and called her son, Arthur, who worked at
the Klock Theatre. He made a hurried trip to a tavern in
Mr. and Mrs. A. K. Reppert and Edna Cram donated most of their National Geographic magazines. There wasn't a merchant or a business man that didn't assist in every way possible. Mrs. Starrett said, "The Metro Club was wonderful the entire time of both wars. The Lions during the Korean Conflict had a pancake breakfast and netted $43 for us; the U.T.L. Shop gave $27 at one time and 20th Century Club $25; W. J. Small and the Johnson and Greenwood Tool Co. and their employees gave money.
Many of the men were astounded that all these gifts were
free; one commented that usually when a troop train came into a town prices
quickly doubled. Two
Because of the canteen, the Starretts didn't get very far
from home. An exception was made one Memorial Day when they and another couple
drove to
On May 6, 1951, the canteen served their own when the local
National Guard unit, which had been called up, departed from here at 11:50 a.m.
There were 9 coaches of troops from
The train was going to
Other helpers added during this time were Phyllis Reeder, Mary Lou Burnside, Louise Deer and Dorothy Klock. Will Clogston, a conductor, told Mrs. Starrett it was "heartbreaking the way these men act on the train —with no life and no fun". One young man wrote, "You must pray. I thought prayer was for women and children, now I know differently". Over 60,000 were served by the City Canteen during the Korean Conflict.
Mrs. Starrett said, "It's impossible to tell of all the wonderful things that the individuals and merchants did. Please realize I could not mention every name, but it was all so appreciated. Mrs. Moulton and I could not possibly have carried on as we did if it had not been for the wonderful cooperation of our husbands."
When the war ended the canteen had $175.41. This was left in an inactive bank account for several | years until the drive started to renovate Norman No. 1, when the entire amount was donated to the drive. Mrs. Starrett said, "We felt that the money came from the community and should go back to the community".
Now, of course there is another war — an entirely different
kind of war, and there are no longer any troop trains. Mrs. Starrett expressed;
the sentiments of many when she said, "We appreciate so much what; the
boys are doing in
In closing, she wished to issue the1 following statement,
"May I as chairman thank
Neodesha, Altoona and the surrounding community for each worker
of the Canteen for allowing all of us to represent you around the world. We
received letters from
"They in turn treated us with the greatest respect and courtesy — a tribute to our servicemen. I wish I could have mentioned everyone and you who donated to the cause; but you must realize that was impossible. "I called many of the workers to help me reconstruct our work, but all said, 'All I can remember is all the work we did'. Oh, it was so rewarding—I'm sure all would agree!"
Pat Casey Hamilton, NHS 55, wrote me about her experiences with the troop trains. She has given me permission to share her contribution with the rest of you.
I was born in Jan 19xx, so was about ages 3-7, thereabouts, during WW2. We lived in the 800 block of Mill Street, and at the corner west of us were the railroad tracks. Now here's where the memory gets a little embarrassing, as my motives were not generous like the canteen ladies, but strictly selfish. The kids in the neighborhood would run to the corner when a troop train came in and parked, then we'd sit on the curb. We'd see the ladies going along by the windows, and, I guess, make every effort to look pitiful. Usually, some of the guys on the train would call us over and share some candy or gum with us. Of course, we trotted right over with our hands held out. But I do remember that we liked talking to the young men too, as I'm sure most had left young family members behind, so wanted to talk to us. The kids I remember were my sister, Florence Casey, and Lawrence and Rosetta Wernsman, Patsy Thomason, and Steve Dodge, all of whom lived in the neighborhood, but I'm not sure all of them sat with me on the curb with their hands out.
