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http://www.yakimaherald.com/ne...ff-ff4e4fced974.html
YAKIMA, Wash. -- For more than 40 years, Mel Tanasse has been a guardian of overlooked history.
Tanasse and fellow members of the Yakima County 40 and 8 Society have restored and cared for a French boxcar, one of 49 sent to the United States by the French as thanks for post-World War II aid.
In October, Tanasse handed off the responsibility for the “Merci Train” car to the Yakima Greenway Foundation.
The local chapter of the 40 and 8 Society has only a handful of members left and now lacks the time and resources to maintain the relic, which sits in Sarg Hubbard Park, Tanasse said.
“There’s not too many of us standing and breathing,” Tanasse, a World War II Navy veteran and former Moxee mayor, said in a recent phone interview.
The Greenway Foundation sees the boxcar as a fitting addition to its veterans memorial, giving visitors a reminder of World War II, and the role Americans played after the war.
The French boxcars were dubbed “40 and 8s” by American doughboys who were transported to the front lines of World War I inside them. The name comes from the signs showing the car’s capacity — 40 men or eight horses.
The 40 and 8 Society, formed by the American Legion, takes its name from the cars.
The boxcars also moved U.S. soldiers during World War II.
After the war, most of Europe was devastated. Its people lacked adequate food, fuel and clothing. American journalist Drew Pearson wrote of the privations Europeans experienced and expressed outrage that Communists were taking credit for the supplies that made it in. Pearson, in his column, called on his countrymen to provide food for the war’s survivors, and to make sure that Europeans knew that the aid came from America.
Pearson’s efforts led to the “Friendship Train” in 1947, which traveled from Los Angeles to New York, collecting enough supplies to fill 270 rail cars with supplies bound for France and Italy. The effort was separate from the U.S. Marshall Plan, a government-run program to rebuild Europe.
The generosity was impressive, Tanasse said, when one remembers that Americans had endured food and gas rationing during the war. It’s a feat he worries might be lost on today’s generation.
“Today, there’s too much of an ‘I, me, myself’ attitude,” Tanasse said.
The Italians showed their gratitude by casting statues that now adorn the Arlington Memorial Bridge in Washington, D.C. But the French decided to respond with their own train of gifts.
French railway employee and veteran Andre Picard originally suggested filling a box car with gifts from each of France’s 40 provinces. The outpouring of gratitude was so great that the Merci Train grew to 49 decorated boxcars, one for each of the then-48 states, with one to be “shared” by the District of Columbia and Hawaii, then a territory that donated large amounts of sugar to the Friendship Train.
“They gave so much from their little,” a 1987 article in France magazine quotes one American serviceman about the Merci Train, “while we gave so little from our abundance.”
The gifts ranged from a carriage once used by King Louis XV to tree seedlings and used children’s toys. One woman, the France magazine article recounted, left her handprint in the wet paint on one of the cars because she had nothing else to offer as a gift.
The rail cars made a triumphal entry into New York Harbor in February 1949. Because the cars were built for narrow-gauge French railroads, they were loaded onto flatbed cars and shipped to each state.
Washington’s arrived later that month, and Gov. Arthur Langlie welcomed it amid great fanfare in Seattle. The car was eventually moved to Olympia and put on display near the Capitol.
All but five of the original 49 cars have survived, but Washington’s almost didn’t make it.
When Tanasse saw it on a trip to Olympia in the early 1970s, it was covered in moss and barely recognizable, stripped of its provincial coats of arms by vandals.
“It was in bad, bad shape,” Tanasse said. “It was pushed to the back of a dirt parking lot with no lighting.”
His 40 and 8 chapter agreed to take the rail car, and with help from the National Guard, which provided cranes, and a trailer from Yakima Asphalt, it was moved to Yakima.
Its first stop was at the Yakima Frontier Museum, where the Yakima County jail now stands, and later to the American Legion post on North 34th Avenue.
Tanasse said work to restore the car was stalled for about six years, until then-U.S. Rep. Sid Morrison got involved. Morrison was able to get Fort Simcoe Job Corps to restore the woodwork on the car, replacing the roof and rotting timbers.
The Yakama Nation then brought the car to Perry Technical Institute, where graphic arts students handpainted new coats of arms and banners for the car.
Carpentry and welding students at Yakima Valley Community College constructed the gazebo that would house the car behind steel bars at Sarg Hubbard Park. The installation was formally dedicated in August 1990. The project cost $47,215.
Al Brown, the Greenway Foundation’s executive director, said the car is a fitting addition to the memorials in the park, which includes monuments to local service members who died in Korea, Vietnam and the wars in the Middle East.
“We’re kind of proud that it is here,” Brown said. “In one spot, you can turn 270 degrees and see memorials to men who died on foreign soil or died protecting American lives.”
The foundation was approached a couple years ago about taking over maintenance of the car, Brown said. This summer some missing coats of arms were replaced and the metal work on the car was repainted to help preserve it.
While the foundation is maintaining it, the car still belongs to the 40 and 8 Society, Tanasse said, until they are gone and then it will turn over to the foundation.
“It’s a good place to display it. It should be there for a long time,” Brown said.
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