Telegraph | Jan. 26, 2014 By Heather Johnson It’s been decades since trains carrying World War II soldiers rolled through Nebraska, but John “Gene” Slattery remembers it like it was yesterday. … “I wasn’t big enough to do much, but I did what I could,” Slattery said. “Everybody did what they could.” … Slattery didn’t cook and wasn’t big enough to carry heavy baskets of food to the trains. So he decided to help by raising money for supplies. His opportunity came with the destruction of his mother’s fruit trees. “It all started when someone gave my brother [Larry] and I some goats,” Slattery said. “We brought them home, and they got into my moth- er’s trees and ruined them. My mom [Margaret] told us we better get rid of those goats. So we hauled them to the sale barn in Ogallala.” The boys decided to donate the proceeds to the Canteen. “When I was standing in the ring, the auctioneer asked, ‘What are you going to do next — sell the shirt off your back?’ I thought that was a pretty good idea,” Slattery said. Slattery started selling the shirt off his back at that sale barn, the Ogallala dance pavilion and any other place he could find. When his family moved to North Platte … he took his fundraiser to places such as the Paramount Theater south of the Hotel Pawnee. “Mostly, I went to the North Platte Livestock
“Prowler,” Daily Bulletin | June 24, 1943 Among the boys eating their cake and milk and remarking about the hot weather at the Canteen yesterday was Sergeant Sterling Holloway of the movies. He told the women he had heard about the Canteen and was eager to get here. [He] said he thought it was wonderful. The Canteen’s second Fourth of July fell between Allied victory in North Africa and the July 10 invasion of Sicily, an event that toppled Benito Mussolini from power in Italy two weeks later. Telegraph | July 6, 1943 The Canteen experienced one of its busiest week- ends in its history the past three days. … Sunday, “Independence Day,” saw many men rushing around the serving tables with aprons dispensing food and drinks to all that visited the Canteen during the day. As one of them put it, “I would feel much more at home with overalls on and a welding torch in my hand, but I still can hand out the food.” Telegraph | July 13, 1943 Paying an early morning visit to the North Platte Canteen today one could, with no real stretch of his imagination, believe that he had walked into the neighboring town of Callaway. Just inside the door was met Charles Majors, owner-editor of the Loup Valley Queen, with his arms full of boxes of fried chicken, being unloaded
Auction,” Slattery said. “At noon, they would kind of shut down between sales. I could leave St. Pat’s school on my lunch break, go to the sale bar and sell my shirt, then make it back to school in time for class.” The Canteen’s unofficial list of current or future celebrity visitors began in 1942 with Philippine President Quezon and Father Flanagan. It would grow longer, mainly from performers and athletes in the service. This visitor would become Disney’s original voice of Winnie the Pooh. Other 1943 ce- lebrity visitors noted in North Platte's dailies were former heavyweight boxing champion Max Baer Sr. (Oct. 27) and Cesar Romero (Nov. 13), “The Joker” in the 1960s “Batman” TV series. Gene Slattery, age 12, sells “the shirt off his back” at the North Platte sale barn (now Isabell Auction Service) in 1945. This picture appeared in an issue of The Saturday Evening Post.
Continued on page 60
1942–43 59
Made with FlippingBook - PDF hosting