we (I) love bob hope

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNfhsUcyld0

Tanks for the memories....


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USNS_Bob_Hope_%28T-AKR-300%29

http://www.almc.army.mil/alog/issues/JulAug04/texas.html

I got to see one of his USO shows during Desert Sheild/Storm in Saudi

This so off the wall: While at Phan Rang in 67/68 I was a clerk in a post office there, I grabed a stack of letters for a fighter squadron that I liked and took them to the ready room for the guys upon return from a mission. As I handed them out to the pilots they took me in to the new bar for a drink...mail clerks are special....well as I shared a drink with a few majors captains and lietuenants in walked bob hope and racquel welch....we applauded them and offered them a drink and welch was asked to autograph the bar, Hope said have her sit on it and outline the results and she will autograph that....well we did and she did....while that was happening I asked Mr Hope if he wanted a drink, and he said "if there was any JD around steal me a shot"....I did and we toasted the american efforts and damn the AHs at home that want to fail. Thus is my brush with a bit of history....two months later I was in the middle of TET and scared as hell.

That's a great story!

My mom met him twice. Once at the US Army hospital she was a nurse at (she was an Army nurse) in Honolulu when he paid a USO call during WW2. And then again at a book signing in So. Calif almost 35 yrs later. What blew her away more than how nice and down to earth he was to the wounded and the staff at her hospital was that all those years later he remembered the show, the name of her hospital, her unit, and her CO when she mentioned she had seen him overseas.

Regardless of what side of a conflict at home you were on, Bob Hope made everyone laugh, smile, and remember that there was good in the world. And that he took that to the troops often on the front lines, time and time again says an awful lot to me about his understanding of what people really wanted and needed.