and he said, ‘You’ll hear from our attorney, who needs to work with your attorney to put this to- gether in formal fashion that we can approve and your (City) Council can approve.’” Phares returned to North Platte feeling “very, very good” — until a friend who worked for the railroad told him U.P. had approved a demolition contract. “I’m trying to get a hold of the president of the U.P.” to stop the destruction, he recalled, “and I couldn’t reach him.” After the depot was gone, Phares said, another U.P. official said Kenefick and his staff “had no knowledge” that the railroad’s buildings and grounds department was “moving toward letting that demolition contract” at the same time the city presented its pitch. The wrecking ball crashed into the Canteen’s beloved home on Nov. 1, 1973. Fifteen years later, Keith Blackledge wrote that former U.P. President Edd Bailey, namesake of the yard, had told jour- nalist Jim Cornwell: “It’s a real shame we didn’t realize then how well remembered the Canteen would be.” The Lincoln County Historical Museum’s front doors on Buffalo Bill Avenue, near William F. Cody’s Scout’s Rest Ranch, are the same ones through which those millions of service members passed. The museum opened on America’s bicen- tennial, July 4, 1976, a year after the dedication of the mini-park at the depot site on July 23, 1975, with a brick monument honoring the Canteen.
But neither North Platte, its surviving Canteen workers nor the legions of World War II veterans would let the memories die. The next wave of proof arrived three years after the depot’s destruction.
Telegraph | Nov. 30, 1976 By Dianne Gabrukiewicz
… “On the Road” with Charles Kuralt stopped in North Platte Tuesday to film a segment about the famous Canteen … Kuralt, 42, said the segment will be aired sometime in January [1977] as part of a new CBS-TV program entitled “Who’s Who.” … Kuralt … learned of the Canteen through a let- ter written by Nancy Green from Nantucket, Mass. “She and her husband were traveling across country in the ’40s,” he said. “They had gone three days on the train without a hot meal — not even a cup of coffee. When they stopped in North Platte, they were greeted with a feast,” he added. The woman had wondered if the Canteen ser- vice was a government operation, Kuralt said, and wrote the North Platte Chamber of Commerce. They passed on the letter to Rose Loncar, one of the Canteen originators, who wrote the woman a three-page history of the Canteen. The woman was apparently impressed and later sent a copy of the history to Kuralt at CBS. … The story on the Canteen, which was located at the Union Pacific depot, was filmed at the Lincoln County Historical Society Museum Tuesday morning. …
The North Platte Telegraph
For the approximately 10-minute segment, Kuralt talks informally with Mrs. Loncar, Jessie Hutchens and Edna Neid. The women were among the originators of the Canteen in 1941. Kuralt’s “Who’s Who” segment aired seven months before Jessie Hutchens’ death at age 80 on Aug. 22, 1977. A nation of veterans responded.
1946–2019 139
Made with FlippingBook - PDF hosting