Like the heroes who flew bombers over Europe, manned ships in the Pacific, stormed the beaches of Normandy or fought through the jungles of Okinawa, the volunteers who worked in the North Platte Canteen sacrificed much during World War II. Not only did they leave their mark on history, together they touched the hearts of millions.

Mike Shavlik didn’t mind waiting almost 75 years for the birthday cake he missed out on when he turned 19. After all, on that late December day in 1944, the Schuyler native was just one of many young men wishing he were home celebrating with friends and family, about to blow out the candles on a cake baked by his mother, wife or sweetheart.

Instead, Shavlik was riding a train from Chicago to the West Coast where he would ship off for World War II service overseas. His trek chugged through Nebraska and landed him at a railroad depot in North Platte for 10 precious minutes – just long enough for the train to refuel. That stop was one of many on the railroad line, but what happened in North Platte during World War II left its mark on history.

What began as a case of mistaken identity led to the people of North Platte, and more than 100 other Nebraska communities, to meet every troop train from December 1941 until after the war, showering about 6 million service members with food, drink, hugs and appreciation during the dark days of World War II. Their interaction lasted minutes. The generosity was remembered for lifetimes. 

Out of the Canteen came countless stories, including one about a pair of “popcorn bride” sisters. Popcorn balls were often given to soldiers passing through the Canteen. Married women from the Sandhills community of Tryon were known for writing down the names and addresses of single girls from the area and placing those scraps of paper inside the treats. The purpose was to connect soldiers with pen pals on the homefront.

When Virgil Butolph of Kearney found a name in his popcorn ball, he gave it to a friend, saying he didn’t want any of the “foolishness.” He later changed his mind and asked the friend if his pen pal had a sister. She did. Soon Butolph and 19-year-old Ethel Winter of Ringgold were exchanging letters.

When Virgil arrived back in the U.S. on furlough during the summer of 1944, he sent Ethel a telegram. The message didn’t arrive until a half hour before he knocked on her family’s front door. They married two weeks later and had five children.

The popcorn magic worked for Ethel’s sister, Vera, and Virgil’s buddy, William Butrick, known to his friends as Woody. Vera was still in high school when she received a letter from Butrick. The couple married after the war.

“I’m thankful that someone put my name in the popcorn ball at the Canteen,” Vera Butrick later said. “Neither of us would have met our husbands otherwise, and our children would not have been born.”

While the popcorn ball matchmaking was quite intentional, the North Platte Canteen began by accident.

Ten days after the Dec. 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, a crowd of North Platte residents gathered at the Union Pacific train depot to welcome soldiers scheduled to pass through town.

They carried gifts – mostly baked goods – for the men of Company D of the Nebraska National Guard based in North Platte. What a surprise when the train stopped, and the gift-bearers realized the men onboard were not their hometown heroes but instead members of the Kansas National Guard.

What now? Deliver the gifts.

First one person stepped forward, then another, and soon all the cakes, cookies and bread had been given to the Kansans.

“Smiles, tears and laughter followed,” said resident Rae Wilson in a subsequent letter to the North Platte Bulletin. “An officer told me it was the first time someone had met their train, and North Platte had helped the boys keep up their spirits.”

That simple act of kindness sparked an idea proposed by Wilson, a 26-year-old pharmacy clerk. Why not give food and beverages to every soldier passing through North Platte?

Wilson mobilized area citizens, and on Dec. 25, 1941 – three weeks after “the day that will live in infamy” – the North Platte Canteen opened. At the Cody Hotel, across from the depot, volunteers filled baskets with food, magazines, cigarettes and other items that could be quickly passed through the passenger car windows as locomotives refueled.

Soon, the growing Canteen moved to an empty lunchroom in the depot. The military personnel were allowed to come inside. Wilson eventually handed volunteer coordination duties to Helen Christ. Volunteers gave their time and resources so the military men and women could enjoy a cup of coffee, bottle of milk, cookie, a pheasant sandwich, pie or some other treat – all delivered with a smile.

“Everything had to be done in a hurry,” said Lavawn Farnstrom of Ord, one of the 55,000 Nebraska volunteers. “The trains didn’t stay long. Most were in and out in 10 or 15 minutes.”

Just 14 at the time, Farnstrom accompanied her parents – Oliver and Verna Edwards – to North Platte from their farm 20 miles north of Gothenburg. The day began early with loading the family’s Chevy pickup with homemade bread and rolls, fruit, coffee and eggs – lots of eggs.

 In one month in 1945, the Canteen went through more than 30,000 boiled eggs. Which explains one of Farnstrom’s not-so-fond childhood memories. “One of my jobs was to peel dozens and dozens of eggs,” she said. “From the time we got there to the time we left, I peeled eggs.”

 Volunteers brewed 16 pounds of coffee and gave away 1,000 bottles of milk to wash down the 1,300 cookies and 200 donuts the travelers devoured each day.

 Behind the scenes, women scrambled about washing dishes, preparing sandwiches and filling trays and baskets with food. Tables overflowed with goodies, attended by women who, once they heard the words “put the coffee pot on,” came to attention, ready to serve. Minutes later, passengers rushed off the train, anxious to experience the patriotic phenomenon they had heard about from fellow soldiers. If the china cups still had coffee in them when the whistle blew signaling it was time to board the train, the cups went along and were returned on an incoming train.

 Up to 3,000 men and women passed through every day, with everyone breaking into rousing renditions of Happy Birthday as a soldier, sailor, airman or volunteer played along on the Canteen’s piano.

Birthday boys and girls also received a homemade cake – usually angel food. The late Hazel Pierpoint baked hundreds of birthday cakes for the Canteen. She’s the volunteer baker who, when she couldn’t get chicken eggs, used turkey eggs in her cakes. Like North Platte’s famous popcorn balls, some of the cakes included the name and address of the maker.

Mike Shavlik wasn’t at the Canteen when he turned 19. He was there right after Christmas, a few days shy of his birthday on Dec. 30, so, he didn’t get a cake. After that visit, Shavlik, who joined the Navy on D-Day, served on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific. He stopped at the Canteen again in the summer of 1945.

Shavlik remembers the hospitality but doesn’t recall seeing a photographer taking photos that day, even though he’s shown in a black-and-white print hanging all these years later at Lincoln County Historical Museum in North Platte.

As fate would have it, Shavlik and his family moved to North Platte in 1970, where he worked in communications for the State of Nebraska. He became involved with the museum and got to know some of the Canteen volunteers. When he turned 95 in 2020, Shavlik called it “quite a deal” when one of the women brought him a birthday cake to make up for the one he missed on his 19th birthday.

Supplying food for up to 3,000 people a day was quite a deal, too. Much of it was donated by families from 125 towns located within a 200-mile radius of North Platte.

 

Towns took turns staffing the Canteen. Many citizens used their own wartime ration coupons to buy supplies. Businesses also donated goods, and some necessities were purchased thanks to cash donations. That the Canteen ever materialized at all is remarkable considering that these salt-of-the-earth people had just come out of the Great Depression.

Volunteers, donations and service members poured through the Canteen until April 1, 1946, eight months after the war officially ended. The number of troop trains passing through had dwindled and it was time to close the doors. By then, 6 million men and women had been served. Not one train had been missed. In 1973, the depot that housed the Canteen was demolished.

The Canteen story lives on in the museum exhibit in North Platte, in books and even plays, one of which garnered Minden High School second place in the Class-B State One Act competition in 2019.

School teacher Jeff Horner first heard the Canteen story while watching a video during a bus tour in Western Nebraska. When the bus unloaded in North Platte, the passengers were greeted by people wearing 1940s clothing and handing out “Canteen-style” foods.

“The story resounded with me,” said Horner, speech and drama coach at Minden High School. After researching the topic, Horner wrote the play, The Coffee Pot is On, which his students performed in 2019. The production includes popcorn ball couple Woody and Vera Butrick, Canteen founder Rae Wilson – and Elaine Wright – who was at the Canteen when she learned her son had been killed in the war. “She said, ‘I can’t do anything for my son, but I can do something for these boys,’ ” Horner said.

Horner believes that the story is a good reminder that there are good people in the world. “I want my students to be reminded that we are a nation of great people who come together in times of need,” he said.

North Platte residents rallied with Canteen spirit when a bus convoy carrying members of the Arkansas National Guard was scheduled to pass through town in June 2018. The soldiers were on their way home from military training in Wyoming and were looking for a place in North Platte to have lunch.

When the North Platte/Lincoln County Visitors Bureau learned of the need, they sprang into action and put the word out. Just as what had happened in North Platte nearly 77 years earlier – citizens, businesses, service clubs and churches were mobilized.

For two days volunteers served bus after bus – 700 military heroes in all – free lunches, snacks, well wishes, handshakes, hugs and heaping helpings of North Platte hospitality. Local school children cheered and waved hand-drawn signs of support.

The event was especially meaningful for one young man from Arkansas who received a birthday cake – the first one in his life.

“He and the other soldiers were overwhelmed. All of which proved that the Canteen spirit is still alive in North Platte and Nebraska, and why it’s so important to preserve the story,” said Lincoln County Historical Museum Director Jim Griffin. “It shows that communities can pull together and do something unheard of and shows the best of what America can be.”

 

Rail Town U.S.A.

Long before World War II troop trains began stopping at the North Platte Canteen, the community began as a winter camp for track layers, ministers, emigrants, saloon owners, prostitutes, gamblers and outlaws. North Platte’s identity as a railroad town started when tracks arrived in late 1866. The community remains a proud railroad town to this day.

Bailey Yard, at the northwestern edge of North Platte, is the largest railroad classification yard in the world. The Union Pacific Corp. facility is named for Edd H. Bailey, who started working with the railroad at age 18 as a helper in the repair shop. Bailey earned 38 cents per hour and moved on to the blacksmith shop before working his way up to become president of Union Pacific in 1965.

The round-the-clock facility handles 10,000 railcars every day, and its repair shops service 9,000 locomotives a month. The sprawling site covers 2,850 acres and includes 315 miles of track. The only way to really take in the yard’s massive size is to see it from the air. The adjacent Golden Spike Tower and Visitor Center provides train lovers with that bird’s-eye view.

The attraction flies the flags of all 23 states that Union Pacific serves. The elevator takes train enthusiasts to the seventh-floor open-air viewing deck that looks out over Bailey Yard. The eighth floor is enclosed for comfortable train watching no matter the weather.

The community’s affection for the railroad is evident in the names of local destinations, events and businesses. North Platte Rail Days takes place in August, and Cody Park Railroad Museum has the only publicly displayed Challenger 3900 series steam locomotive in the world. Near Interstate 80, the Canteen Bar & Grill reminds diners of North Platte’s generous canteen heritage.

While in North Platte, many railroad devotees stop at Fort Cody Trading Post, the tourist stop from a bygone era. “When I moved here, you didn’t have to ask what someone’s dad did for a living. They worked for the railroad, and you just knew that,” said Chuck Henline, former owner of the roadside attraction. “The railroad tourists get so excited to watch those trains. Along with I-80, the railroad is the lifeblood of North Platte and Nebraska.”