This story was published alongside a series of photographs taken and captioned by Katherine Keely and Esmé Anger.

The B-2 bombers roar overhead. From the sidewalk, the sound almost reverberates in your chest.

An A-10 Thunderbolt II, commonly known as a warthog, from the Whiteman Air Force Base flies on Monday at the Knob Noster Cemetery in Knob Noster. People often gather in the cemetery to spot planes during practice operations, according to DD Smith, a long-time resident of the town.
*Esmé Anger/Missourian*

It is too overcast to see, but even if Knob Noster Mayor Perry Byerly heard or saw them from city hall, he wouldn’t have spent time worrying about where they were going.

The bombers, based at Whiteman Air Force Base, could be on a training flight. Or they could be making another 37-hour round trip to the Middle East; bombers from Whiteman were involved in the opening attack in the Iran war.

A Knob Noster postcard is displayed at Meyer’s Market in Knob Noster March 14. The newest addition to Meyer’s Market is a book section, where the store’s first book club was hosted the previous night.

*Katherine Keely/Missourian*

“There’s people that sit and focus on it,” Byerly said. “But you just pray for the best, and that they go out and do their mission right.”

Evidence of the close ties between Whiteman and Knob Noster are everywhere. Tattered military uniforms, flags and photos in an antique store. Military patches on the wall next to the wine specials behind a bar. An image of a B-2 bomber in the ceiling of the AMVETs Post.

“We’re here to support the troops and whatever their mission is,” Byerly said. “You support the troops, and you support the families that are left behind, and we do what we’ve got to do as a community.”

Communities tied together

On a Friday afternoon in March, Byerly wrapped up his tasks as storm clouds gathered and the sky waited to break. He became mayor of Knob Noster in August.

Byerly first moved to Knob Noster when he was stationed at Whiteman as an initial B-2 cadre member in 1990. After learning that his grandfather was born in nearby Warrensburg and growing into the community, he decided it “felt like home.”

“It’s quiet for the most part,” he joked, “until the planes take off.”

A billboard featuring Northrop Grumman sits near U.S. Highway 50 on Monday in Knob Noster. Northrop Grumman is the prime contractor responsible for system design and integration for the B-2 bombers at Whiteman Air Force Base.
*Esmé Anger/Missourian*

He describes Knob Noster as a “base community,” and said Whiteman and the town are intertwined both in proximity and in partnerships. Some people on the base eat or shop in Knob Noster, some live there. Many stay in the town after they retire from service. Byerly said the city has programs to support active-duty service members, base operations, security measures and veterans.

Byerly said there’s an obvious sense of community.

“If you need something done, people around here tend to just help out any way they can, and it’s been really great,” he said.

Whiteman and the military, in a multitude of ways, are the invisible string that ties that community together.

Aircraft contrails linger in the evening sky as people walk along North State Street on March 27 in Knob Noster. Whiteman Air Force Base sits less than five minutes from the center of Knob Noster and has approximately 5,600 military members and 2,000 civilian employees.
*Esmé Anger/Missourian*

“Everyone is touched by the base in some way, and the base is touched by everyone here,” Byerly said. “It’s a very unique community because we are so close to the base, but being as small as we are, it’s a very unique dynamic.

“Especially in times where there might be some excitement in the world, the community kind of draws together,” he said.

“There’s a lot of support that goes out.”

Digging into family history

Jackie King, owner of Once Upon a Find, corralled her tiny white dog as she greeted customers. Her store is in an old brick building downtown, filled with modestly-priced antiques and faded military relics.

Uniforms, patches, flags, photographs and other military paraphernalia are sprinkled throughout the antique booths. A few items on the tables sport B-2s or Whiteman logos, but many do not. Many are from elsewhere, California, Texas and even Puerto Rico.

King herself is from Guatemala, lived in California, and eventually came to Knob Noster to be closer to her mother-in-law.

King has family ties to the military, and said it’s nice being in a town where that is something that’s celebrated.

She walked to the back of the store and reached behind a shelf. She fumbled through several leaning frames and carefully dragged out a large, gold-framed portrait of a uniformed man behind heavy glass. He has dark eyes, poised with reserve, and the sun has not drained the color from his cheeks or navy blue uniform. She held the portrait gingerly, pointing out the scratches and other signs of age.

Jackie King looks down at a portrait of her grandfather on March 6 at her antique store in Knob Noster. King, whose father was a prisoner of war in Japan during WWII, has been working with a veteran in town to uncover more information about her family’s long military history.
*Katherine Keely/Missourian*

“My house caught on fire in 2020,” she said. “We lost everything. This picture was there.”

She had carried the portrait of him everywhere.

She never expected to walk back into her home after the fire and see it mostly intact, with minimal water damage.

She knew little about her grandfather’s military service, but living in a military town helped solve that mystery. A Knob Noster resident she showed the painting to set about investigating his branch of service. After a lot of detective work, he helped her confirm that her grandfather was a captain in the Marines. Then they dug into her father’s military history.

She beamed with pride as she spoke about her dad and grandfather’s service to America, the places they’d lived, and the battles they’d fought in.

“It’s just amazing,” she said, later adding, “now I know everything about my dad that I didn’t know before.”

Local hangouts

The black tiles on the stoop of a crumbling, red-brick building read “BANK,” but the building is no longer a bank, though it still has its black metal vault that visitors can sit inside and get a view of the lock’s mechanics.

David Eich pours a beer on March 6 at the Lost Art Taproom in Knob Noster. The taproom is a newer addition to Knob Noster, opened by Eich and Jesse Stauffer-Baum in 2021. The taproom is in the building of an old bank.

*Katherine Keely/Missourian*

Inside, the Lost Art Taproom is modest, and the walls sport, as its name implies, locally made paintings to be found and kept. David Eich, part-time owner, tended to customers on stools as the skies finally broke.

One regular, a sun-spotted man with a thick New York accent and a blue Air Force baseball cap, ordered another pint and slid Eich cash across the bar top.

To the right of the front door, a small frame contains an article from the Warrensburg Star Journal last November.

”Lost Art Taproom Wins Gold at Missouri Beer Cup,” the headline reads.

The bar, and all of downtown, is just a couple of minutes away from Whiteman, and its roots reach Eich and his patrons, too.

A fabric scroll hanging above the bar has several military patches, some from Whiteman, across industries and commands.

Eich said their regulars can donate a patch to display, and some do so as a final imprint on their favorite drinking spot before being reassigned or deployed.

A handwritten sign hangs on a wall of the Lost Art Taproom on March 6 in Knob Noster. The taproom brews its own beer and won several awards at the 2025 Missouri Beer Cup.
*Katherine Keely/Missourian*

The friend of the man in the blue cap itches his long, silver, rough beard, prompting a quip from his friend, directed at the woman next to him: “Did you know he’s playing Moses in an upcoming movie about the Bible?”

The two men roared with laughter. Moses wasn’t in the military. Still, he said Knob Noster was where he’d found community.

The man in the blue cap said he worked as a mechanic on base and stayed in town after retiring because the people he knew were here.

The two men began discussing dinner plans: the Mexican place, or maybe Olde Town South. Excitedly, they realized it was Friday, which meant it was steak-dinner night at the AMVET post.

‘In the same club’

Few barstools and tables were open at the AMVET post around 7 p.m. on a Friday. The outline of a massive metal B-2 is fixed to the bar ceiling. On a whiteboard, the steak surcharge prices were written by the ounce in neon dry-erase marker.

A model of a B-2 bomber hangs over the bar on March 6 at AMVET Post 143 in Knob Noster. Royce Moore, who used to work on planes at Whiteman Air Force Base, now runs the AMVET post and created the model for the space. “If you join the military, it doesn’t matter what job you had ... y’all are in the same club,” Moore said.
*Katherine Keely/Missourian*

Conversation filled the dining room as volunteer servers moved about, topping off waters and taking orders. There was so much energy in the room that it felt like half of the town was there for the dinner deal and famous fried appetizers.

“I’ve created a beast I don’t know if I can handle,” said AMVET Post 143 Cmdr. Royce Moore as he glanced around at the packed hall.

Moore said he took on the endeavor to improve the post’s fundraising efforts on behalf of veterans and their families after he became a member. He had been helping at weekly bingo when he had the idea for dinner deal nights, now a crowd favorite.

“People love it,” he said.

Moore and his wife, Cora, met while both worked as mechanics on military aircraft. Together, around the country and eventually at Whiteman, they worked on F-117s, HH-60s, and B-2s.

The couple settled in Knob Noster after retirement because they’d grown to love the town in their time stationed at the base.

Moore said there is still a lot of that same camaraderie and community among retired military at the post.

“If you join the military, it doesn’t matter what job you had, if you were Army, Marine, Navy — y’all are in the same club, and you all know that. So you in the civilian world, you might have your little cliques and stuff but … when we see somebody come in, we can just connect with them,” Moore said.

Chasing a championship

With minutes left in the last quarter of the district championship basketball game, the score remained tied and Knob Noster High School fans in the stands got louder.

The girls focused on their identical opponents: Oak Grove, also the Lady Panthers, also colored black and orange. The crowd roared as the final seconds ticked away and the game went into overtime.

Three boys sitting at a table in the front of the student section pounded their fists on the table. They anxiously looked back and forth between their clipboards and laptops. All three played on the high school team, and when they lost, showed up to support the girls.

Junior Kurtis Chase, whose dad works on base, said this year is his third time moving to Knob Noster. “It’ll be good to see familiar faces when I graduate,” he said.

Kurtis is not alone. Seventy percent of students at Knob Noster are connected directly to their parents’ service at Whiteman Air Force Base, according to Knob Noster Superintendent Jerrod Wheeler.

“On average, military children PCS — do a permanent change of station — seven times between kindergarten and 12th grade, so they’re constantly moving,” Wheeler said.

“We make sure that that move does not become a burden for those students,” he said. “We know that national defense starts at home and it starts in the community. We have to wrap ourselves around our installation, make sure that we provide support for the mission, and that as a community, we step in every way.”

For this military community, that support can be as simple as showing up in droves for the year’s biggest game.

In the final moments of overtime, Oak Grove, the other Lady Panthers, got a leg up and held their defense until the clock ran out.

High schoolers leave the girls basketball district championship game on March 6 at Knob Noster High School in Knob Noster. A last minute comeback from Knob Noster brought the game into overtime, but they ultimately lost to Oak Grove 58-54 and placed second in the district standings.
*Katherine Keely/Missourian*

When the buzzer finalized the defeat, the crowd cheered for the Knob Noster girls anyway.