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Dec. 7 / By Mary Jo Kelly

It was a clear crisp December Sunday, when Jack stepped off the train. He came to Kansas City to visit his friend Jim for the day. Five months ago the two buddies left their home town, Ottawa, Kansas, to seek jobs in the big city. Jim got on with the government in Kansas City. Jack was hired by KC Southern Railroad, which located him in the sleepy little burg of Neosho, Missouri. Jack quickened his step through the bustling crowd, eagerly looking forward to a reunion with Jim to compare jobs and plan for the holidays ahead.

Through their former landlady Jack learned Jim had received his draft notice and gone home to Ottawa for the weekend. Jim, 24, had registered with the Selective Service in the 1940 draft of all 21 to 35-year old men.  Apparently his name had been drawn in the Washington DC lottery.

Jack would spend the day alone. He made his way to Mass at the Cathedral downtown. Then to lunch at the Forum on Main Street. From a newspaper left on the counter, he noted a new thriller, SUNDOWN, was playing at the Lowe's Midland Theater a few blocks away - 30-cents if he got there by 2 o'clock. A good way to wile away a few hours, he thought. Jack settled in the crowded theater, watched Pathe News, Previews of Coming Attractions, and finally Gene Tierney and George Sanders appeared on the screen.

About five minutes into the movie, the screen went blank. The theater lights came on. The manager, tugging a stubborn microphone cord, announced the Japanese had just bombed Pearl Harbor and President Roosevelt was declaring war. There were moments of eerie, stunned silence. Then everyone just got up and left the theater. 

Jack rode a nearly empty streetcar down Main Street to Union Station. The station, with its huge domed waiting room decorated for Christmas, normally abuzz with joyful sounds of the season's crowd, today, was strangely quiet. One could almost hear a pin drop. People huddled in small family groups. Some stood stoically at gates waiting to board trains. Some just sat and stared.

Jack wondered about his friend. He realized Jim was drafted for one year in peacetime service. Now it would be war service. Jack himself would be 21 in a few months. Would he be drafted, too? He worried about his parents in Ottawa. And his high school classmates.

Occasionally, someone would come from an upper office with late radio news and people would scurry around to hear. Sometime during the waiting hours, paper boys appeared with the Kansas City Star EXTRA waving above their heads. There were not enough copies to go around.

It was a long somber afternoon and evening 'till the nine-forty-five back to Neosho.