1946–2019
LEGACY
M any say: “Why don’t newspapers ever report good news?” For 51 consecutive months, North Platte’s newspa- pers reported good news every single day they published. The newsmen of KODY did, too. Good news flowed, in an endless stream, from 200 miles around into the Canteen room. Its warmth bathed train after train of servicemen and women and lingered for years with those who received and bestowed it. From that most unlikely spot in the middle of North America, they took good news across a devastated, oppressed world when it needed rescuing the most. Perhaps it was the relentless backdrop of bad news — of bit- ter defeats, bloody victories, death and destruction at every turn — that caused so many millions of service members and their families to cherish the North Platte Canteen. It was not the lone repository of goodness in this land. By no means. Had goodness not existed from coast to coast, and border to border, World War II could not have been won. And yet this Canteen, and the community and region that sustained it, became for our fighting forces an eternal symbol of all they fought for. They said so.
It was unbelievable. They said that, too. Even now, people who live in North Platte and know the story will encounter stubborn skeptics: That didn’t happen. Couldn’t happen. People look out for themselves. Don’t you? Perhaps if humans looked out less often for themselves, and much more often for others, there would be far less “bad news.” And far fewer wars. It did happen. The long-buried Telegraph and Daily Bulletin stories in this book prove it, plus many more stories that couldn’t be included. So do the memories recorded elsewhere of those who watched it happen and let themselves be the instru- ments who made it happen. The building where it happened is gone. Its site is a Canteen memorial. Those who live here still, and those who have joined them, learn that “Canteen Spirit,” 100 years after the Great War and 75 after the greater one, still lingers in North Platte and the plains beyond. It can break out any time. Even in blinding blizzards. And these present days.
OPPOSITE: North Platte well-wishers welcome surprised members of the Arkansas National Guard into the D&N Event Center on June 19, 2018. Waiting for them was a 21st-century revival of an institution most of them had learned about only minutes before: the World War II Canteen. Stephen Barkley / The North Platte Telegraph
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