Tiny Kansas Town Pushed on to Save the Children

Few visible signs remain from time when Morganville helped war-torn French town rebuild

Linda Mowery- Denning
The Salina Journal

MORGANVILLE � Most residents, if they remember the effort at all, think about the huge pageant the citizens of Morganville staged to raise money for the war-ravaged town of Feves, France. The only visible symbol of that time hangs in the local cafe � a woodcarving of an elderly couple before a fireplace. It was a gift from the citizens of Feves to the citizens of Morganville, the smallest town to participate in a program aimed at rebuilding European towns after World War II.

The program was part of the nation's "send bread instead of bullets to Europe" policy. Dorothy Young Martin, who now lives in Clay Center, helped box clothes and other items for shipment to Feves. She also sold ice cream during the pageant.

"We just did a little bit of everything we could think of. It was after World War II and we knew people over in Europe needed help," Martin said.

The story of Morganville and Feves was almost forgotten when a group of school children toured the Clay County Museum in 1990. Local historian Kathy Haney, who remembers attending the pageant as a child, told them the story: In the spring of 1948, a group of Morganville residents attended a meeting of the United Nations Economic, Social and Cultural Organization at Clay County High School. It was there they learned about Operation Democracy, which would evolve into the Sister City program of today.

Velma Carson, a Morganville citizen who worked as a journalist in the east before her return, wrote to the head of the organization and asked for an assignment.

"We are blessed with a world-minded minister and with a lot of bright people who would rather be farmers than famous," she wrote. "Please find us one who will exercise our growing vision of the world beyond our Rim of Prairie."

By summer, Morganville agreed to adopt the town of Feves in northeast France. It wasn't until later residents learned "a dry Protestant wheat-growing Kansas town had adopted a badly-destroyed Catholic grape-growing village," Haney said.

Despite the differences, the people of Morganville pushed on, mainly because of the children who could have died that winter without their help. Almost 75 percent of Feves was in ruin. Everyone needed bedding and shelter and the children didn't have milk. Morganville responded with a fund-raiser that was to attract more than 2,000 to the town of 250 residents. The New York Times sent a reporter. So did the Associated Press. In a matter of days, Velma Carson and Martin's sister-in-law, Velma Young, pulled together a pageant, "One World Peace Festival," that included 150 actors and livestock. Carson wrote the script, the history of Morganville, to the meter of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Hiawatha." Velma Young was in charge of the music and orchestra.

"It was quite a pageant," Dorothy Martin said.

One man sold popcorn and gave the proceeds to Carson to buy candy for the children of Feves. Another gave rides on his old Army horse. Others sold cookies and told fortunes. More than $1,000 was raised that night, including the money visitors jammed into old milk cans after the pageant. Haney said the donations flowed freely after two couples appeared on stage with wheelbarrows. One couple represented Morganville and its abundant food supply. The other couple, with an empty wheelbarrow, represented Feves. "Can we pray while empty baskets line the world and ours are full?" asked a narrator. "How then shall we feed the whole world when we are so far and small? Each one, someone, that is all."

"It was written as a tearjerker and it got the money out of the crowd," Haney said.

The relationship between the two towns continued for several years and then faded as Feves recovered from the war years. In 1950, NBC radio featured Morganville's efforts in a program entitled, "A Prairie Noel."

Haney was reminded of the link when the son of Dan Roenigk, who joined with Carson in organizing the Feves project, took his late father's scrapbook to the museum. It served as the inspiration for a slide show sponsored by a grant from the Kansas Humanities Council.

Haney would like to do more. The 50th anniversary of the Feves-Morganville connection is in 1998 and she thinks it would be great if Morganville restaged the pageant. But she's not pushing.

"This much has kept the story from dying and that was my objective," Haney said.

Salina Journal
July 6, 1996