LIVING 1950
THE PEOPLE ACT

A PRAIRIE NOEL

BY
LOU HAZAM

PRODUCER- WADE ARNOLD
DIRECTOR - EDWIN DUNHAM

DECEMBER 23, 1950
7:00 - 7:30 P.M., Saturday
NET: LIVING 1950

(MUSIC: LINDQUIST QUARTET - REEL - #20 ... IN, HOLD, THEN UNDER TO FADE FOR)

NARR: For uncounted Christmases, the 250 people who are Morganville, Kansas, had read what was written in Luke 2,14.

BIBLICAL V: (ECHO) �And suddenly, there was with the angel, a multitude of the heavenly host saying, 'Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace ... good will toward men.'�

NARR: Then, as suddenly as the appearance of the heavenly host, Morganville, Kansas acted. This little town, lost in the wheat fields, this speck on the rim of the prairie, opened its great heart, and in the name of the Prince of Peace, embraced the world.

(MUSIC - POSSIBLY QUARTET SWELLING UP TO CONCLUSION, THEN INTO THEME AND UNDER)

ANNCR: On this eve of Christmas, LIVING 1950, in cooperation with the Twentieth Century Fund, brings you a true story, befitting this season, told by the actual people who lived it .... a story in the spirit of the teachings willed to us by Him whose birth we celebrate this holy week-end. Third of a special series of programs entitled "The People Act" is This Prairie Noel.

(MUSIC: UP AND OUT )

ANNCR: Your narrator, Ben Grauer ...

(MUSIC IN THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTMAS, UNDER)

NARR: Season's greetings, America ... and may God be with you this Yuletide, -

(BEGINS) It is written in - [see footnote below] - "God moves in mysterious ways His wonders to perform." Well, this is the story of how God moved a little farm community on the edge of the Kansas prairie, to bind itself In spirit and substance with a similar speck on the earth He created five thousand miles across continent and ocean. Giving to the trite phrase, "Hands across the sea," a miraculous significance demonstrating to mankind, man He created in His image - the only true path to everlasting peace.

(MUSIC: OUT)

NARR: Come in, Field Reporter Elmore McKee, and tell us about it.

(MUSIC: PROGRESS THEME, CARRYING US INTO THE STORY AND FACING OUT UNDER )

NARR: It is harvest time in Kansas and the month is July and the year '48. Out in the fields that stretch level and unbroken to the horizon, except for the big farm-houses that rise awkwardly from them, the combines are busily reaping Morganville's harvest of wheat and oats, product of their labors, product of the seeds planted months before. And in Morganville, old men like Lon Silver sit in the shade, look out over the fruitful fields, and remember.

SILVER REEL #20 ... �I can remember it was pretty wild here. The Indians were running up and down here and, although they were under the supervision of the government, government soldiers, but they were trapping and hunting up and down the river, thousands of them, and as a kid, I was scared to death of them. The minute I saw an Indian coming toward the house, I made a beeline for under the bed and got there and stayed there until they left.�

NARR: (SOFTLY) Lon Silver ... dreaming in the shade ...

SILVER: (CONT'D) �We had no roads or railroads. The transportation was mostly ox teams and they went to Leavenworth, Kansas, for their groceries. They would go and bring home a big load, and then they would distribute that among the neighbors and then, later on, somebody else would go. When they came to a stream and the stream was up, maybe they would have to camp a week or two (FADE) before they could get across, but (JOIN) we didn't go hungry here ... had plenty to eat ...�

(MUSIC RISING OUT OF THE FADE, UP AND DOWN-SOFTLY}

NARR: (QUIETLY): Lon Silver, dreaming in the shade, dreaming of the days of 1860 when old Ebenezer Morgan, seeking refuge from rum, whaling and the sea, sought isolation on the plains, only to find himself followed by immigrants from Norway, Sweden and Central Europe, only to find himself, there on the prairie, still smelling the sea.

(MUSIC: OUT)

And as old Lon Silver dozed and dreamed, those to whom Morganville belongs today, those in the fields reaping the wheat and oats, those in the kitchens preparing the night's supper, grateful to God for his bounty, they thought other thoughts.

Velma Carson, who had been away to New York and come back, Velma, tall as the corn, sturdy in leadership, warm of heart. These were her thoughts as she recalled them to us ...

VELMA: REEL 25 ... �In the past war, and before the war came, we had tried isolation, and then we found that we weren't isolated, that they had reached out and found us anyhow. So this time, we thought that surely we could reach out to the world before they came to us.�

NARR: (RHETORICALLY) But how?

VELMA: (CONT'D) �We tried Pen Pals, but somehow or other the correspondence died. We send to China, for some of us had friends there and they came back �missing.� It was already too late. CARE tried sending out money and clothes, but we really had no contact because we didn't know whether they ever got there or not, We tried reading the papers, but they only filled us with despair. We tried being religious, but at every meeting of the Youth Fellowship, or Young Adults or Sunday School, we felt religion wasn't enough unless we did one amplificative thing.�

NARR: But what?

At a town affairs program in a nearby community, Morganville hears how a town in Minnesota adopted a town in Germany ... how like peoples wrote to like peoples - the preacher to the preacher - the schoolmaster to the schoolmaster ...

VELMA: REEL #25 (CONT'D) ... �It appealed to us. We came home and talked about it. But how to find such a town, and how to do it ... we were only 250 people. And then we also said we could find a town our size, that we didn't have to adopt London or Paris. So we wandered around for a while wondering how we could get this town. And somebody said, 'You have addresses out in the world. Why don't you write?��

NARR: Writing reveals an organization known as �Operation Democracy� ... a clearing house ... almost a matrimonial bureau, a friendship place, where lonely cities, like lonely hearts, can meet each other.

VELMA: (CONT'D) �So we sat down and wrote a timid letter, the first because we thought we might be too small for any use. And we said, �we are only 250 people and we haven't any money.��

(MUSIC BRIDGE)

NARR: In New York City, genial �Lafe� Todd, Executive Secretary of selfless �Operation Democracy� records his prompt reply to the letter from Kansas... a reply that began with -

TODD: (TO BE RECORDED) �Dear Mrs. Carson,�

NARR: And got down to business with ...

TODD: (TO BE RECORDED): �The first step will be for Morganville to select the country with which it would prefer to work. The countries with which we are working [at] the present time, are France, Italy, Holland, Luxembourg and, in a few cases, Germany. Of these, the need is probably greatest in Italy and France. (FADE) All the other countries, however, are extremely eager for these affiliations ...�

(MUSIC BRIDGE)

NARR: Back in Morganville, the arrival of Lafe Todd's letter from Operation Democracy was like a trumpet call for Assembly ...

(PEOPLE GATHERING, UTTER)

And they assembled. The preacher, the teacher, the storeman, the postman, the house wife, the farmer, the mayor, the editor. In the school auditorium? In the city Hall? No. There on Velma's porch as the sun dropped beneath the stacks of hay.

MRS.YOUNG: REEL #21 ... �It was a lovely place for us to meet. Morganville has a lot of shade trees, and when the evening dusk came, we had a wonderful crop of Kansas mosquitoes.�

NARR: Speaking, Mrs. Young, the music teacher ...

MRS. YOUNG: (COND) ... �While we talked, Velma Carson's sister, Nelda Carson Flinner came around at intervals and dashed us with a little mosquito lotion, and we swatted some of them, and some of the people were smoking in an attempt to keep down the mosquito barrage, and it was mostly in vain. But in the meantime, we worked into the discussion of what we could do to unite our town with the world and what we could do to unite our own community, too.�

NAAR: Agnes Huff, editor of the local Tribune, remembers that evening very well ...

MRS. HUFF: (REEL #24) ... �The group there that night represented everything, every part of our community ... the farmer, the minister, the school superintendent, high school pupils, business men and business women ... they were all there. In some way, there was such an excitement.�

NARR: Velma Carson read to them from Lafe Todd's letter ...

TODD: (TO BE RECORDED) ... �In France, we would suggest two communities, both very small and located in Alsace-Lorraine. The town of Saulney in 1940 had a population of 340 people. Of these, 230 were sent off to German camps. It was destroyed again and again and completely pillaged. It is essentially a fruit-raising section. The town of Feves (near Metz) has a population around 300 ... In Holland, (FILE) a tentative suggestion might be the village of Moerdijk (pronounced Moor-dike)�

NARR: There in the dusk on the porch, little people, no different than you or me, but big people if measured by the size of their heart, sat and considered whom they would talk to a half-continent and an ocean away ...

MRS. MELLIES: REEL #25 ... �My name is Mrs. Andrew Mellies. My family was in favor of adopting an Italian city. We were corresponding with an Italian family and we liked this family very much.�

NARR: Mrs. Young recalls ...

MRS. YOUNG: REEL #21 ... �We talked quite a bit of taking a Dutch town, but we decided the Dutch people were always very frugal and would stage a come back if anyone could.�

NARR: Velma Carson, watching Caesor fall with Italy, Hans Brinker go out of the window with Holland, and Graustark disappear with Luxembourg, puts it this way ...

VELMA: REEL #25 ... �We finally almost settled on two towns in France. We discussed them. One raised wines, raised grapes and made wine for a living. But here was Feves.�

TODD: (TO BE RECORDED) ... �The town of Feves, near Metz, has a population around 300. It was badly damaged in 1940, and hit by the Allied Air Forces later on in the war. The Germans also did a thorough job of pilfering. This is a farming community -- mainly cattle.�

VELMA: (CONT'D) ... �Here was Feves, which said it was a cattle town ... and that was us. We were cattle people. We would know how to write that first letter of friendship, (of how we drove the cattle home and milked, and the price of cattle and the whole sad story of trying to raise cattle for city people.) But we discussed it at great length, because we were that evening on the front porch of making a friend for life across the ocean, and we thought and talked a long time because we knew when one town was chosen the others wouldn't be ours anymore.�

NARR: But finally, there in the dark that summer eve ... the dark to keep the gnats away ... and late for some had come late from the harvest, they wrote down the names of their towns and they retired to count the vote.

SCHWAB: REEL #19 ... �My name is Edwin Schwab. I was on Velma's porch that night. Feves was my selection because some of the destruction, the bombing and some of the torn up things was caused by our boys, was done by our boys, and I felt that things could be more friendly if we chose Feves, France.�

NARR: Apparently most of the others felt like Edwin Schwab for when the vote was counted, Morganville in Kansas had made a blind date for peace with a town called Feves in France.

(MUSIC :UP TO TRIUMPHANT CLIMAX)

VELMA: REEL #25 ... �We chose Feves and immediately we intended to write letters to them, telling them all about us, and how it was with us, what we were doing, and how we lived and how we sent our children to school and what a good world it was, and how we wanted to be friends.�

NARR: But then Morganville that would begin this great cultural exchange, read the notes about Feves again, read of 70% of the homes damaged ... read of fields, still deadly with mines, unplowed, read of children in sore want.

VELMA: REEL #25 ... �We thought long of writing to people whose children were starving when our were well fed. We could hardly mention our herds, when theirs were hungry for milk, when they were threatened with TB.�

NARR: And then it was ... Then it was that the farmers on the prairie saw:

VELMA: REEL #25 ... �You can't open a friendship on an equal basis when one group's children have food and the others don't. And suddenly we were stricken with the necessity of offering those children part of what we had.�

NARR: But that takes money. Next question ... How to raise it? An ice cream social, or what? We continue the story with Mrs. Young.

MRS. YOUNG: REEL #21 ... �Once in the afternoon, after Velma Carson and I ate lunch together, and then went to our place, Velma wondered what we should do. She said, �Shall we put a headline in the paper, just introduce it to the public in cold facts, give them a shock? Shall we use the country line and give a general ring and say we have selected this town, or shall we do something else? What do you think, Velma?� My name happened to be the same. I said, �I think we should have a blowout. What do you?� And Velma Carson said, �I think so, too.�

"She said, �What do you think we should have?� I said �We have a little place down here that the NYA fixed for us.' We call it our amphitheater. 'Why don't we have something down there?� She said, �That is my idea exactly. Why not?� She said, �What should we have?� I said, �We should have a pageant.� She said, �That is just what I think?��

(MUSIC: BRIDGE)

NARR: A pageant ... What, for a small town anywhere in America is more natural than a pageant! A pageant to raise money for Feves. But what kind of a pageant? About what? Featuring whom?

They dig out their old college books and study them. They consider idea after idea only to dismiss them. Finally ...

MRS. YOUNG: REEL # 21 ... �Velma Carson's mother gave us the real inspirations. She said, 'Why not use the history of Morganville?��

NARR: Ah, there was an idea! Use the story of founder Ebenezer Morgan, seeking isolation for the purpose of breaking down isolation! Bring in old Lon Silver's Indians. Take the various nationalities who have settled Morganville ... the Swedes, the Swiss, the Norwegians, the Irish ... Let them dig out their old country costumes. Wrap the whole thing in the Star Spangled Banner And the French National Anthem ...

NARR: Write narration to the meter of Longfellow�s �Hiawatha.� Get the High School drama teacher to stage it, the music teacher to conduct the music. Call the pageant something like �One World or None� and invite the whole countryside.

(MUSIC : EXCITING BRIDGE}

NARR: Days, weeks go by. People scour their attics for the clothes they or their parents wore to come to America. Search out the dancing costumes of their children. Remove the Spanish shawls from their living room pianos. Cookies are baked, and cakes and pies, and ice cream is made. And gradually, like Little Eva in �Uncle Tom's Cabin,� The pageant �just growed� until ... in the words of Mrs. Young ...

MRS YOUNG: REEL #21 ... �We started this pageant with the idea of using the people in Morganville, intending to have about thirty people. The thing grew, and we finally wound up with 150 people, or approximately that, and it was a community project reaching out to other little towns.�

NARR: Finally, the big day arrives. From all the surrounding communities, next door and next state, the crowds collect ...

(CROWDS)

NARR: The overture swells up ...

(MUSIC: PAGEANT MUSIC WITH A RESOUNDING BURST)

And Morganville begins its ...

PAGEANT VOICE (SLIGHT ECHO THROUGHOUT ... DRAMATICALLY) �Message to Feves�

(MUSIC: DOWN UNDER)

PAGEANT VOICE: �Little town in France., we know you better than you comprehend....�

NARR: (SOTTO VOCE) The setting is a woodland setting, a pit surrounded by trees and shrubbery ... Out of the background appear the Indians who build their campfire. Then the early settlers Ebenezer Morgan and his family and Lon Silver playing the part of his father.

PAGEANT VOICE: (CONTINUING) �Grasshoppers once ate us bare ... ate our suppers and the year�s food; ate our clothes off the line. Once we choked on dust so heavy; day was dark and lamps were lighted.

But never have we plowed our ground waiting for explosion's sound. Never has our sky rained horror (FADE) made by man.�

(MUSIC: PAGEANT MUSIC SWELLS UP, COVERING FADE, THEN DOWN AND - OUT UNDER)

NARR: As the pageant voice intones Mrs. Carson's narration, one after another of Morganville citizens - suddenly world citizens ... take the center of the stage. Listen to some of the roles they played that night as they recorded them for us.

MRS. H: REEL #19 ... �My name is Ole Haverson and I came direct from Norway to Morganville.�

MRS. W: REEL #19 ... �My name is Wickland, and I came from Sweden ... Helsingborg, Sweden.�

MRS. H: �Well, I thought it would be nice to sing this song of our country, as we were Swedish in the pageant, that we would sing �Woodlands, Cheer us Woodlands,� but Mrs. Wickland changed it."

MRS. W: �I suggested that we should have a Swedish dance on the stage and I called Anton Peterson and they went and got us Swedish costumes, and we had the dance.�

MRS. H: �Well, Mrs. Wickland carried a Swedish flag and us four came hopping along back of her and we did our Swedish dance.�

MRS. W: �I didn't dance. I just held the flag.�

MRS. H: �And then we joined. We came out two by two and then joined and did our Swedish dance and I had my picture taken and I still got it, framed, and it is hanging on my wall in my bedroom.�

NARR: Edwin Schwab's role was not dissimilar ...

SCHWAB: REEL # 19 ... �Well, I represented the Swiss people, which is our nationality, and we were coupled off. There was four of us, myself and Mrs. Roenigk, which is also a Swiss girl, and Mr. Clayton and his wife, which is my partner's sister, and we done a folk dance and, of course, we had our typical Swiss pipes, smoking and having a jolly good time on the stage. Mrs. Roenigk, which is a cousin of mine, is about a head taller than I was and possibly we did look like a real Swiss couple.�

NARR: Mrs. Mellies ... who was for choosing a town in Italy, remember? ... gave her bit for. Feves, too.

MRS MELLIES: REEL #23 ... �I played the part of Buddha, and people were around me worshipping.�

NARR: As Mrs. Mellies sat as Buddha, Eileen Silver told us ...

MRS. SILVER: REEL #26 ... �I was dressed in a Chinese costume and my little daughter Carol was with me and she also wore a Chinese costume. I sang �Poor Butterfly.��

NARR: To the piano accompaniment of Mrs. Ruth Schwab, Morganville's piano teacher, like this ...

(MUSIC: REEL #26 INSERT SMALL SEGMENT OF MRS. SILVER SINGING "POOR BUTTERFLY" AND FADE)

NARR: Like many another family, Mrs. Oettinger's enrolled in the pageant in toto ...

MRS. 0: REEL #22 ... �My husband was one of the Cossacks who helped to draw the boat on which the Russian dancers appeared on the scene. In the boat was supposed to have been our smallest daughter Ann, who was five at the time. Too many sandwiches played her out. She was so tired she didn't want to act, so she failed to be in the pageant that night. The oldest daughter, Leonia, was with the Russian dancers. She did the solo dance. Our other daughter, Rose Mina, was another dancer in another scene during the pageant. I was Chairman of the Ice Cream Committee.�

NARR: One of the hits of the pageant was the Lindquist Quartet

MEMBER: REEL #20 ... �Four of us sang this number, �Children of the Heavenly Father,� in the Swedish language.�

NARR: And they re-sang it for us that you may hear it as it sounded then.

(MUSIC: REEL #20 "CHILDREN OF THE HEAVENLY FATHER"- AND OUT.)

NARR: But the scene Velma Carson liked best was the closing scene:

VELMA: REEL #26 ... �On the left was the classic Angelus scene of the French peasant with blue jeans with his wife by their empty wheelbarrow. On the right, we had a similar scene with Kansas actors, and the Morganville wheelbarrow was filled to heaping with tomatoes, and the yellow wheat fields stretched out behind while the Angelus bells rang slowly in the distance.�

(CHURCH BELLS SWELL UP FROM THIS)

(MUSIC: JOINS TO CURTAIN)

NARR: Morganville's pageant was a rousing success ... one thousand dollars worth of success! But perhaps not a cent that was earned was as precious as the money that came from Crippled Homer Christiansen, known to all the children as �The Popcorn Man.�

HOMER C: (REEL #23) ... �I was selling popcorn during the pageant here and I figured that I might as well do my share towards humanity as well as anybody else; that is, I figured that we owed to the people in the world to have better will and thoughts about each other than we have.�

NARR: So Homer Christianson took the money he earned selling popcorn that day.

HOMER C: (CON'T) �I took the proceeds to Mrs. Carson and it wasn't much and I figured they would buy a little candy for the children of France.�

NARR: Homer Christian, popcorn vendor, philanthropist, and philosopher.

HOMER C: (CON'T) �Being that is good because it creates a unison among the people of the world that can�t be replaced by anything else, I figured it better to buy flowers for the living than it is for the dead. I felt this was a start in the right direction and that is why I done it. I wouldn't know how to express myself, that is, that they have to each other - that there should be more loving than hatred amongst the people in the world..�

NARR: More loving than hatred amongst the people in the world. Has anyone ever put it any better? Is this not the spirit that grips us at Christmas time ... that we wish for 365 days of the year? It is with this spirit that they on the prairie's rim set Dan Roenigk, newly-blessed 'Treasurer of the Feves-Morganville affiliation, to writing to Feves that the pageant money be wisely spent.

ROENIGK: (REEL #27) ... �At that time, I wrote Mr. Torlotting, the school teacher at Feves, what the people needed mostly. He replied that they could use rice, which they had not seen since 1940, sugar for the preservation of their foods, cereals and powdered milk for their children. We got busy right away.�

NARR: Yes, between plowing and the preparation of the wheat seed-bed, between the milking of cows, and the doing of chores, and the seeding of alfalfa, in for consultation they called Florence Roenigk, trained as a dietician ...

F. ROENIGK: (REEL # 19) ... �My name is Florence Roenigk. After our pageant, Velma Carson came and asked me if we could work out a ration of powdered-milk for the sixty children in Feves. We worked out this ration for the six months for these sixty children, using this powdered milk and had the milk sent to the children in Feves.�

NARR: Sent with all the other precious staples that Feves had not even dreamt existed 'til Morganville dreamt of them. Sent with clothes collected at haying time and as the winter wheat was sowed.

V. CANFIELD: (REEL #20) ... �My name is Vera Canfield and we heard about the need for clothes in Feves and my daughters, Elaine and Janet, and I, went around the neighborhood collecting these clothes, my daughters on bicycles.�

MRS. MENARD: (REEL #23) ... �My name is Mrs. Julia Menard. When we heard about the children in Feves that would need diapers, we started to collect outing and old blankets and things and made over a hundred diapers for the children there for the babies, rather.�

SUSAN Y: (REEL #24) ... �My name is Susan Young. Well, I gave them my clothes that I had outgrown. They were all perfectly good. There was nothing worn-out about them. I gave them some shoes. They were perfectly good, and I put new shoestrings on them and I sent them over and I put my name in them and I got a letter back from the little girl. I took it to school to let all the rest of the kids see it, and she sent me her pictures too!�

(MUSIC: BRIDGE)

NARR: And so it went with Morganville and Feves. Two cities lost in the bustling confusion of the postwar world. Friends who had never met except in letters and clothes and diapers and powdered milk. And the friendship held fast even when �Lafe� Todd, after a trip to France, reported back that they ... the ardent prohibitionists of Morganville ... had adopted not a cattle community, but a town that raised grapes and made its living making wine:

(MUSIC: �JINGLE BELLS� IN AND UNDER TO HOLD FAINTLY)

NARR: Soon Christmas came to Kansas and with it the memory of those friends in France who would, perhaps, go without presents if Morganville didn't send them. Morganville did ... and more. Yes, Morganville, in this slack time given over to the repair of combines and waiting for Spring, gave a Christmas party for Feves. As Velma Carson describes it for us ...

(GAY LAUGHTER, PARTY BG UNDER)

VELMA: (REEL #26) ... �We called it a Noel party. We wore evening dresses for the first time in Morganville in deference to French elegance and aside from the French flag for decorating, we had a huge Christmas tree which held a center place on the stage, and which in the Grand March we all decorated with dollar bills or more for future gifts for our French friends.�

(MUSIC : JINGLE BELLS FADES OUT)

NARR: Then, as winter melted into summer, happened one of the most exciting things of all. A man from Morganville actually visited Feves, France! The man - Farmer August Kolling.

KOLLING: (REEL #22) ... �I took a Farmers' Friendship Tour to Europe, and when we got to Nancy, France, I left my tour, taken a train to Metz, where I taken a taxicab to the little City of Feves, which Morganville adopted. Now when I got there, they were preparing lunch for me. One man brought in what they call the Mirabelle. It is a drink that is made there in France. It was one of the most delicious meals that I ever did eat in my life. The Mirabelle ... one good swallow of Mirabelle was all that I could take!�

NARR: To shouts of �Vive Morganville� greeting him everywhere he went, Farmer Kolling was shown the town.

KOLLING: (REEL #22) ... �They are very short of milk. They need milk cows, for the simple reason that because when the Germans went through, they took everything away from them. They are shot up badly, bombed badly.�

NARR: Moved, Farmer Kolling tries to help ...

KOLLING: (REEL #22) ... �I offered them some money when I was over there and they would not take it. They didn't feel like they wanted to take the money from me at all.�

NARR: He visits a farm and finds a tractor sitting useless without tracks. Offers to help pay for the tracks.

KOLLING: (REEL #22) ... �But this farmer says, 'No. I have money enough to pay for these tracks ... but I can't have them until the United States buys more goods in France. That is what my government says. We need more dollars badly.�

NARR: Farmer Kolling, originally never too sold on the Morganville's new-fangled friendship, returns feeling much different ...

KOLLING: �Before I left, I hadn't given it much thought, but after I'd gone over there and met the people, oh I felt like the town was doing a great thing helping them folks out. When I got back, I told my friends that I felt that we should buy more from France. These folks, they need help, need help to put them back on their feet.�

(MUSIC - BRIDGE)

NARR: Farmer Kolling's visit, plus Lafe Todd's, were like roots in the ground nourishing the growth of mutual understanding and affection. Thereafter, the land-locked Kansans who lived by the bounty of nature, gave thought to planting time in Feves.

ALLEN: REEL # 25 ... �My name is Lou Allen. We found out that we could ship seeds to these people, quite a variety of vegetable seeds. We organized a committee and I was appointed chairman of the Seed Committee.�

NARR: Through this Seed Committee, across the Atlantic went the ovules [wrong word] of beets, Brussel sprouts, beans, cabbage, cauliflower, cucumber, so that when Thanksgiving came, they weren't only husking corn in Kansas, but also giving thanks in Feves.

Even so, Morganville would not let the holiday pass without again investing themselves for peace. Let Florence Roenigk tell you about it.

MRS. ROENIGK: REEL # 19 ... �That Thanksgiving, we decided to have a community party at the church, and all the people of the community came to the church instead of having individual family parties at home.�

NARR: Paul Graves, the music teacher, got a little group together and ...

GRAVES: REEL # 19 ... �We worked up a little number for the Thanksgiving celebration in which we organized a gypsy band of singers. We spent the entire day roving back and forth singing gay Gypsy melodies, and presented a gay, colorful group in our gay Gypsy costumes.�

NARR: To music, then, were the people of the town ushered to the community Thanksgiving dinner. People like ...

E. HENRY: REEL # 22 ... �My name is Elmer Henry and I have a family of two married daughters and one grandson. They are usually at home on Thanksgiving Day and we have our dinner together. This time, we went to the church and had our dinner in the church basement with the rest of the community.�

NARR: A dinner, prepared in part by Mrs. Leda Brown, war bride of a Morganville GI.

MRS. BROWN: REEL # 26 ... �I come from Bologna, Italy. This was my second Thanksgiving in the United States and a week before, Miss Velma Carson came to my home and she want to ask me if I could serve Italian style spaghetti dinner for the people of Morganville. I made ten pound of meatballs and fifteen package of Italian style spaghetti, and people told me that they were good and they like it, and they eat them all.�

NARR: But there was more that went on there that Thanksgiving than Americans eating Italian spaghetti for the sake of Frenchmen. From Feves had come the first request that ever came from the French city ... a desire for something concrete by which they could picture the Morganville that had so befriended them. Morganville was the birthplace of a prominent artist Arvid Jacobson, now teaching art at the University of Kansas. To him went the farmers asking if they might exhibit some of his paintings in the schoolhouse that Thanksgiving Day that one might be chosen to send away. Here's how Professor Jacobson remembers it:

JACOBSON: (SPECIAL RECORDING) �I was asked to select five painting most representative of Morganville and the surrounding areas. Several of the pictures were inspired by memory, pictures of spots around Morganville, such as the creek winding across the Hanson Farm, the wheat fields on the uplands, still waters where I fished and skated as a boy many years ago, the corn standing in shocks on the Anderson and Silver homesteads, the tall woods bordering the Republican River.�

NARR: At ten cents a vote, Morganville picked, almost by unanimous decision, a picture of harvest-time in Kansas.

NARR: The bountifulness of nature which they prayed would soon return to Feves.

And this time, their gift was answered by a gift that came across the sea from France. Speaking, Mayor Dan Roenigk:

ROENIGK REEL # 27 ... �We had a letter from Mr. Torlotting explaining that the town had gotten together and purchased a wood-carving for Morganville. We received this carving in the spring of 1950. It is a picture representing a French home in Lorraine. An old man and his wife are sitting at a table. He is reading a Bible and she is napping. The artist's name was Albert Thiam, whose home is in Lorraine. We are going to hang this picture in the City Hall in Morganville for future generations to view.�

(MUSIC: BRIDGE)

NARR: And so was the friendship, born of the desire for peace, now welded in water-color and wood.

Soon fall, in its usual way, became winter again; And winter, spring and spring, summer and still Morganville cared for its ward. And its ward struggled the harder because it knew someone cared. �Hands across the sea?� More than hands; Hearts across the sea!

RITA T: REEL #24 ... �My name is Rita Trudell. I went to the mayor and got the name of a boy who was 12. His name was Raymond Perisotte. I wrote to him and he wrote back. Oh, I told him my age and asked him his. I told him what stores we had in Morganville. Then I got a letter back and brought it over to Velma and she translated it for me. He said that all the children were very excited when the package came that had pencils and candy. He said it was very unusual for them to have pencils with erasers on them.�

NARR: This, my friends, is worth a thousand international treaties! For this is in the spirit of Him to whom we sing Hosanna at Christmas time, of Him who said:

VOICE: (FILTER) �This is my commandment, that yea love one another as I have loved you.�

(MUSIC - SOFT BRIDGE)

NARR: Now, suddenly it is July again. July 14, Bastille Day, and Kansas decides to honor France's independence Day. And to this celebration, home from assignment in Paris, came Billie and Edwin Utley, she, late of Morganville. And they bring their hometown folk this news:

MRS. U: REEL # 27 ... �My name is Billie Utley and I used to live in Morganville. While in Paris, we heard about this Morganville and Feves relation and we decided to visit Feves while we had the opportunity. We got to Feves on a week end. It was a small town, the size of Morganville. I think it was Saturday. The school children remained later than usual to greet us. Also the mothers and the under-age children were there, so we got to meet and shake hands with each of the children and their mothers.

�They gave us a dinner which lasted for approximately three hours. They explained that we were received as ambassadors of Morganville, and that the wonderful reception accorded us was not for us alone, but for the people of Morganville. Our next visit to Feves was to be just as friends.�

NARR: But the Utleys returned with more than just reminiscences.

MR. U: REEL # 28 ... �I brought back some pictures to Morganville, taken in Feves. We also brought back to play for everyone, records of the pageant they had given in Feves.�

NARR: Yes, Feves too, not to be outdone, had put on its own pageant to commemorate the 2-year-old Union [should be 1]; a pageant dedicated to Morganville. A pageant with a �Spirit of Feves,� explaining that France is not merely the Eiffel Tower, but small villages that would like to join hands with their American friends. A greeting so direct that Morganville could hear it with its own ears.

RECORDING: INTRODUCE EXCERPTS FROM PAGEANT HERE I.E. -

NARR: Hear the speeches ...

RECORDING: SPEECHES IN FRENCH

NARR: Hear the dancing ...

RECORDING: SOUND OF DANCING

NARR: Hear the singing ...

RECORDING: SINGING IN FRENCH

NARR: Hear Feves' final words ... �There must be a better world. Let us rebuild it together.�

(MUSIC: IN AND UP TO PEAK, THEN MELT UNDER)

NARR: But the biggest thrill of all ... I'll say that again ... but the biggest thrill of all was not the music, the dancing, the speeches that the Utleys brought back, but ... (PAUSE) ... Here, let Velma Carson tell you:

VELMA: REEL # 26 ... �We had begun wanting to talk about life and things, and realized we could not talk unless we were on equal terms. We attempted to make ourselves equal by sharing and then we were ready to come back to the old friendship idea and, 'My child is in school and doing very well. How is yours?��

NARR: You remember all that, don't you? Well, listen ...

VELMA:(CONT'D) �Probably our greatest excitement and pleasure in our town adoption experiment came when the Utleys came back from France, saying Feves� people wanted pictures of us, pictures of how we lived and what we were wearing and doing, and the insides of our houses. The request made us feel very happy, somehow; made us feel as though we were recognized and truly had friends in the world. We had come full circle. We were now ready to begin that friendship we thought of that July night on the front porch.�

(MUSIC SWELLS UP TRIUMPHANTLY AND DOWN)

NARR: It was as if the last lines of Morganville's pageant, back in those beginning days had at last been answered:

PAGEANT V: (ECHO) �Feves, we're Morganville in Kansas, Respondez vous, s'il vous plait.�

(MUSIC :SWELLS UP BIG AND OUT)

NARR: Come in, Elmore McKee ...

McKEE: Thank you, Ben Grauer. Friends, this is Christmas time and in a very real sense, this is a Christmas story. For embodied in this small town's effort to do something constructive that there may be �On earth, peace - good will to all men,� are the basic teachings of the Prince of Peace Himself. Democracy, this story teaches us, is far more than the mouthing of high-flown phrases. It is a program for friendly living. It is believing in that program. It is the personally �acting out of it.� And to me, perhaps the most interesting thing of all about this Kansas-Feves affiliation is the way ... perhaps it is God's way ... that the whole thing backfired, so to speak. For before I left that lovely little Kansas town, I talked to the pastor, Reverend Joe Buckles, and heard from his own lips these significant words:

REV. BUCKLES: REEL # 24 ... �I think most of us feel here that we have not only made a contribution to Feves, but in a very real way, Feves made a real contribution to us in helping to strengthen our tolerance and appreciation not only of the things they represent, but of, also, the other national and racial and religious groups in our own community and the ones we come into contact with over here.�

(MUSIC: XMAS. SWELLS UP AND DOWN)

(JOIN FUND MATERIAL )

(CLOSING TO COME)



Footnote: The original script had a blank here, presumably to be completed later. The source of this well-known phase is a hymn written by William Cowper, a friend of John Newton who wrote Amazing Grace, and it was probably Newton�s inclusion of the hymn with others he published that led to its widespread fame. The first verse is:

God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants His footsteps in the sea
And rides upon the storm.