March 18, 1943
Kansas City, MO

The headlines used words like buried alive, sun treatment, starvation, and deprivation. The papers were no longer simply reporting the news. They were serving a larger purpose.

The Army and Navy had finally begun releasing stories of what American soldiers on Bataan and Corregidor had been forced to endure. Relief, they said, could no longer reach the prisoners.

The public was given a clear message: be angry, be afraid, and put that anger to work.

At the Rock Island Railroad telegraph office in Kansas City, we were told to stay focused, keep the wires clear, and keep the messages moving. 

New bond posters went up: Back the Attack. Buy an Extra $100 Bond.

Every payday, a few dollars disappeared from my envelope before I ever touched it. They were set aside for my Series E war bonds. “For the War,” they said.

Every time the newspaper printed another casualty list, my sister Marie and I would scour the columns, searching for familiar names.

A cousin.
Four boys from St. Stanislaus.
Nine from Holy Cross.

And then, a man I had secretly admired for as long as I could remember. A dear friend. Seeing his name in print stopped me cold. The quiet admiration I had carried for him had nowhere left to go.

Marie’s son, Charlie, was drafted and returned home with what they called “shell shock.” He barely spoke. The young man in the portrait on the mantle no longer matched the quiet man who sat alone in the corner of the room each evening.

Nothing felt certain anymore.

My job at Rock Island was steady union work, and good money for a girl like me, but there was not much to spend it on. No landlord would rent to a single woman unless she had a father, a husband, or a story convincing enough to pass a man off as one. I had none of these.

I spent my free hours at the soda counter in Kline’s Dime Store, nursing a cherry Coke and reading the Kansas City Star, or anything else I could get my hands on.

It was there that I met Joey.

He leaned against the counter one afternoon and asked about the weather. Something about the rain. I told him I was ready for spring, for a little sun. He smiled, his eyes that impossible shade of blue. I returned the smile, and I suppose that was the beginning of all my mistakes.

He talked about big things. Buying property, running a business, getting ahead once the war was over. It all sounded possible in the way things do when you want them to be.

He told me I wasn’t like most girls. Said a woman with her own paycheck was worth her weight in gold.

“You and me,” he said one dusty evening, “we could get ahead quick. A woman who knows how to work, a man who knows how to work the table. It’s a good mix.”

I should have heard the warning in that. Instead, all I heard was the word we. For once, it felt like someone really saw me.

So when we were sitting at that same dime store counter a few weeks later, and Joey asked me to marry him, I wasn’t saying yes out of love. Not really. I was lonely in a way I could hardly admit to myself.

I said yes because the world seemed to be ending and beginning at the same time, and I needed somewhere to stand.

I didn’t know what I was walking into then. I didn’t know that this new life would hold my greatest joys and my deepest wounds, all woven together so tightly I couldn’t tell one from the other.

The day I stepped into my new vocation as wife and future mother, I believed with all my heart that I was walking toward a better life.

I did not yet understand that sometimes the things we choose to save us can also be the things that undo us.

Seven of the ten adult Pulliam children with their mother, Maude Pulliam (née Owen), Kansas City, 1943. Nadine is seated at the far right beside her mother

Nadine’s Northeast follows the life of Nadine Burnett (née Pulliam), who was born in 1921 and spent most of her life in Northeast Kansas City, where she raised ten children amid the city’s rapid changes in the 20th century. Written by her granddaughter, Betsy Cochran, these historical fiction stories draw from Nadine’s lived experiences, local history, and a little family lore. Each installment stands alone while weaving into a larger portrait of Nadine’s past. For a deeper dive, visit betsycochran.substack.com, where you can subscribe for free or choose a paid plan for extended content.