Mary (Burnett) Aycock: “Spinning the Elevator Wheel”

I have very fond happy memories of “the Station” that date back fifty years.

In the 60’s my mother worked at Union Station as a teletype operator for the Rock Island Railroad and sometimes, if we were well behaved and presentable, my Dad would pack my four sisters and me in the station wagon and let us go with him to pick her up.

It was a thrill for us to go into this big magnificent building with all the hustle and bustling going on.

We got to sit and slide across the benches that lines the Grand Hall. We were in awe at the height of the ceiling.

We visited with the shoe shine man.

And, best of all, we got to ride the elevator and there was an operator on it that worked a wheel in it to make it go up and down. Sometimes he’d let us spin it.

When we’d leave there, we always felt like we had just left a magical place.

Now, fifty years later, I volunteer at Union Station and I still feel like it is a magical place every time I enter it. It is sad it is not a booming train station like back in the “good ole days” but air transportation did passenger trains in.

William D. Trumbo: “Worried About the Station’s Future”

In 1992, at 7 a.m., from a compartment on Amtrak’s Southwest Chief, I awoke to see the Union Station at Kansas City for the first time — looming above me, but grander than any station I’d ever seen.

Perhaps this was my imagination, as it was boarded up, behind a wire fence, deserted and shrouded with mystery.

A year later on the same journey, l made sure I was dressed and out of bed for this stop, but found myself unable to cross that fence or see anything more. For two years I’ve thought about this structure, about how America could possibly lose something as grand as this, and worried about its future.

This summer I took my 80-year-old Dad from Oregon back to his family home in Ottawa, Kansas, so our first Kansas stop was to the Union Station in Kansas City. We parked in front, among signs and rubble, yet I was not disappointed at all. This building is why people study architecture and truly represents a crowning achievement of man. Yet past the boarded up doorways, I saw a man emerge from an open one. It couldn’t be possible, but I asked anyway. With his permission, we spent the next hour inside — in awe, in tears, in dismay. Dad walked fo the gate marking the train which could have taken his family to Ottawa in 1918 and also found the train that might have taken him on to Oregon in 1936. The signs were all there, the destinations still marked, and, for a moment, the trains with names somehow came back to life again. I turned and walked back towards the great hall, imagining myself a farm-boy, arriving in Kansas City for the very first time.

A railroad man once told me that stations were for “first impressions.” I could see he was right. With a station like this, Kansas City must truly be a wonderful place. ls it possible that the memory of that moment might affect a man every day, in subtle ways, causing him to give a city the respect it needs and deserves? You sure don’t get that feeling from airports and freeway off-ramps!

In Ottawa we found that the citizens had turned their station into a museum and the home of a model railroad club. En route home, a native told me that you have a 10-year plan to renovate your station as well. Given the inspiration I’ve received, l’d like to contribute in a small way to this effort. Any information on your plans will certainly be appreciated. I look forward to the day when I can arrive on a “chief” and see that hal/ in all its glory once more!

Angelia Keller: “School Trip”

Boarding a train in 1966, Angelia Keller and her classmates from Westwood View Grade School were about to about to embark on a great excursion for a school trip to Chicago.

The 6^th grade class was leaving for a week-long trip. While Chicago was full of sites and attractions like the aquarium and Chinatown, Keller remembers the thrill of leaving the station and experiencing the luxuries of train travel with the reclining chairs to sleep in and dining cart.

For Keller, this trip was a “great experience” she will never forget.