Senator Joseph McCarthy interrogates Army representative Joseph Welch. It was a time when people lost their jobs only because someone accused them of being a communist.

But there were more than political matters loosening the strings that tied Morganville and Fèves together. A whole host of very practical reasons contributed. From the start, the language barrier meant communication was slow and cumbersome. It also led to a connection that was not so much person-to-person, as committee-to-committee.

Another problem was the state of Operation Democracy. It had been formed on the enthusiasm of the people living in Locust Valley, New York. It was established as an altruistic venture by people such as former Congresswoman Isabella Greenway King, who could well afford the cost. So no provisions were made for soliciting funds from donors or taking commissions for the substantial services O.D. provided.

Todd was entirely in agreement with this course. In an August 22, 1949 letter to Carson, he commented, "I, for one, couldn't face the thought that any part of Homer Christianson's [sic] $15.00 went to pay salary, overheads, etc., for an organization that just gave some friendly advice."

With donors successfully encouraged to give exclusively to those in need overseas, Operation Democracy began to have problems paying its bills. In that same letter, Todd wrote, "We cannot continue it beyond the Fall tied solely to Mrs. King's pocketbook, and it would be dishonest to create the impression that we could."

Todd added he was hoping a foundation would step in and help. But in an April 14, 1950 letter to Roenigk in response to Morganville's March 21 donation of $50, Todd mentioned he no longer had a secretary and then added:

Needless to say, however, Operation Democracy was deeply moved and very grateful for Morganville's generosity and faith in this program. As you know, we are continuing to operate on a shoe-string, and your help means far more than you can imagine to all of us.

But just as a fading fire often flares briefly, the sister cities were about to experience a new, albeit brief, period of additional national and international attention. Carson received a call from New York City which she mentioned in a March 21, 1950 letter to her daughter Cynthia:

On Friday, a fella is coming from New York from N.B.C. [National Broadcasting Company] to see about including Morganville in a series they are doing on "Democracy at work." Half-hour programs on the evening schedule. He, a Mr. McKee, phoned Sunday. Will be here a day or two.

McKee felt Operation Democracy was a perfect example of people taking action on their own, and so he had contacted Todd. Asked for a good example to use in one of his programs, Todd recommended McKee contact Carson. The March 24 trip to Morganville allowed McKee to meet Carson and some of the others who had been instrumental in creating the pageant and organizing the efforts on Fèves' behalf. The plan was to return in the fall with a tape recorder and a script writer.

On April 10, Dan Roenigk wrote to McKee with some more good news.

We have just received the complete record of the program put on by Feves for us and it is in the form of [a] tape recording. lf you decide to use the Morganville-Feves setup and can use this tape record for the Feves angle of your program, we will be more than glad to loan it to you. It is in two rolls. We do not have a tape recorder, so until we can find one, I do not know what the program consists of.

In an April 14 letter to Roenigk, Todd thanked Morganville for making a donation to Operation Democracy and to the cost of converting the discs of the Fèves recording to tape. He ended with the following:

I have heard from Elmore McKee about the exciting time he had in Morganville, and he assures me that the network series he is working on will include the Morganville story. I hope Morganville will survive the numerous New Yorkers who continue to drop in on you. If Morganville were just a little closer to us, I'm sure you'd have a lot more of us to deal with.

Please give my regards to Velma Carson when you see her, and I hope you will express my personal thanks to everyone in Morganville for the splendid help you have given us.

A June 28, 1950 letter to Carson from McKee confirmed Todd's news that Morganville would once again make a splash on the national scene and gave a few additional details:

I am glad to be able to report that the Fund Trustees have approved the thirteen specific projects and NBC has committed themselves to weekend radio time - probably after the football season.

Before long, I shall be writing you as to when it will be convenient for the script writer and myself to pay Morganville a visit. Possibly this would come best in the early autumn rather than later.

But before McKee's return, Morganville had a mid-summer visit from the Utleys, who had recently returned from their long overseas posting. People were eager to hear about their visits to the small French village. A program was held on July 14 in the Morganville schoolhouse. In addition to viewing the Utley slides, Roenigk formally presented the Fèves woodcarving to the villagers. The tape recording from the June 23, 1949 program in Fèves was also played.

The Morganville paper mentioned in an article before the program that "some of the girls who studied French this winter are going to try to sing" the French song "Sur le Pont d'Avignon," which was performed by the Fèves schoolchildren for Todd during his visit to the village and during the program recorded in June 1949.

A later article stated the Utleys said the Jacobson painting was hung in a classroom in the Fèves schoolhouse. Roenigk said the Fèves carving would be placed in the Morganville school.

Listen to Morganville Broadcast on the Air

Morganville's part in the National Broadcasting Company series called "The People Act" has been scheduled for Saturday evening, December 23, at 7 to 7:30 Eastern Standard time. This will be 6 to 6:30 our time. The nearest NBC station for us is probably WDAF at Kansas City.

This is the program which Elmore McKee and Lou Hazam of Washington, D.C. were working on last fall when they were here making tape recordings. Both Morganville and Feves voices will be heard over the national coast to coast network.

The Morganville program was called "A Prairie Noel." Many of the village's expatriots wrote to the newspaper and others in the village about their surprise at hearing the story their hometown had played such a key role in.

McKee wrote a letter to Roenigk the day after Christmas, which read in part:

I thought a great deal about my friends in Morganville over the Christmas season, and my wife and I listened with breathless interest to the program which had been recorded in advance. On the whole, the public response has been very encouraging. We are deeply grateful to all of you for having given us such a magnificent Christmas story. It was wonderfully authentic. ... I feel that we all must rejoice in the net effect of the program in this moment of world history.

The Noel Ball was held on December 29, 1950, three days after McKee wrote his letter. But the money raised that year was not used to purchase food or clothing. Fèves was no longer in need of such things. Instead, the money was used to buy a projector. An article in a nearby paper quoted Carson:

"Our gift this year is to the school - a projector for colored slides," Mrs. Carson said. "We have sent them slides of our selves, and some we have of them, but they can't see them very well because they don't have a projector. We are also sending Christmas cards."

Some misunderstanding apparently had taken place as Father Holveck had a 35-mm-slide projector. The school also had access to $25. So when Morganville's $100 arrived, the older students went about the village and collected $20 additional. With the resulting $145, the school was able to purchase a motion-picture projector.

But the separation growing between the two villages can be heard in another Carson statement in the same article: "Now we are on a more polite basis. We are friends and we try to write letters, but it is hard because of the languages."

The on-going financial problems at Operation Democracy led to Todd taking an international relations job with the federal government late in 1950.

And it wasn't just Operation Democracy that was experiencing financial difficulties. An October 6, 1950 letter from Roenigk to Contract Packers in New York, included the following:

The past two years we have been shipping our gift shipments of food, clothing, etc. to our adopted town of Feves, France through the American Aid to France, Inc.[,] but since they have quit operations, I was wondering whether our town could enlist the help of your committee in handling our shipments in the future.

While Carson remained as the head of the committee in Morganville, the problems she had with her eyesight and other concerns meant the Morganville connection was largely maintained by Roenigk. In Fèves, only committee member Torlotting remained. So in mid-December of 1952, Roenigk arranged with CARE to send English lessons and a woolen blanket to the Torlottings.