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Show ! Hotel Caters Exclusively to I Servicemen and Their Families clusively to K J nd Their Families ,iy, j 1 V vi I If J ' ' f 1 One of the most unusual hotels in the nation is located in Washington, D. C, where, j despite nightly sellouts, ac-I ac-I commodations are provided far below OPA ceiling prices! It is the United Nations Service I Center, formerly the Capitol Park hotel, now under the exclusive management man-agement of the Recreation Services of the War Hospitality committee. The only hotel in the United States taken over completely for this purpose, pur-pose, it is perhaps the largest Canteen Can-teen in the world for servicemen of all the United Nations, and is operated op-erated as a voluntary community project along modern health and sanitation lines. The United Nations Service center has everything from its own newspaper, news-paper, Flags Abreast, to a free nursery nurs-ery for children of traveling servicemen. service-men. Washington, D. C, is such a hub for the armed services that the Canteen, despite the hotel's size, was forced to take over an adjoining school house, converting it into room for 345 more beds, a total of 570 available sleeping accommodations nightly. The huge center was officially Typical guests at the Center are Petty Officer 3c Stanley Wicklund of Boston, and his wife. When Wicklund came In the door he was told that he was the one-millionth serviceman to register at the hotel. The Wick-lunds Wick-lunds are shown resting In a corner of the nursery, where they have put seven-months-old Bobby to bed. opened October 27, 1943, and there has been a virtual sell-out of accommodations accom-modations since. It is the only Canteen Can-teen that accepts the wives and families fam-ilies of servicemen, as well as those In uniform. No reservations are accepted ac-cepted first come, first served. This Is true of both officers and enlisted men. Just recently, the 1,000,000th visiting visit-ing serviceman was honored. He was Petty Officer 3c Stanley Wicklund, Wick-lund, of Boston, Mass., stationed at the naval air base, Patuxent River, Md. Has Own 'Police Force.' Actually it looks like the headquarters head-quarters of the general staff, except that 74 former employees of the Capitol Park hotel are still working there as members of the Canteen staff. Everything that occurs at the Canteen must be approved by the military district of Washington and the Potomac River naval command. A 24-hour duty is maintained by the Shore Patrol the Canteen's own police po-lice force! Though much of the Canteen's varied va-ried accommodations are free, some services are rendered on a cost basis, ba-sis, which astounds the average Washington civilian. This is true of laundry service, clothes dryers, washing machines, valet shops, barber bar-ber shops and the impressive cafeterias. cafe-terias. The cafeterias are tremendous projects in themselves. There are two one each for officers and enlisted en-listed men. Miss Rochelle Z. Kendall Ken-dall of Dallas, Texas, is the Canteen's Can-teen's food expert and nutritionist. Pointing out that the most modern and sanitary methods of food catering cater-ing had been employed there, she said: "Every governmental stress on basic, nutritious foods has been observed by us, as has the general governmental theme of utmost sanitation sani-tation during this wartime crisis. We have, for example, employed single-service single-service paper eating and drinking utensils almost exclusively, in place of obsolete and sanitarily inadequate dishwashing equipment, thus avoiding avoid-ing the possible danger of transmission transmis-sion of disease from mouth-to-mouth via poorly washed common eating and drinking utensils. More than 50,000 paper cups weekly are used." Nursery Is 'God-Send to Mothers.' The free nursery at the Canteen, according to Mrs. Luther Gulick, the nursery chairman, is a "God-send to mothers and children traveling through Washington." Employing two registered nurses on an eight-hour shift each, and one child educator or psychologist, the nursery operates 24 hours a day. There are 60 volunteers in this department de-partment alone, all having passed an intensive course in child care before acceptance. Since its opening, 2,568 children have been cared for, with the average between 9 and 12 months of age. The youngest guest of the nursery was a 16-day-old infant! But most unusual is the nursery's "Baby Ferry Command." This is a group of uniformed AWVS women who roam the city's Union station a block away, and route weary mothers moth-ers and children to the Canteen. Should a child or mother be ill, both army and navy dispensaries in the city are on call for emergencies. Apparently nothing has been left to chance in this greatest of all Canteens. It is a mighty institution that has grown out of this war, and is a living testimonial of the home front's contribution to the war effort ef-fort in general, and to the serviceman service-man and his family in particular. |