Bob Hope - Christmas Eve 1990

It's not often that you get the chance to meet someone 'really' famous.  One who's been around for a long time and is so hugely well known that to not know his name would mean you've never heard of radio or television.  That one guy for me was Bob Hope.  It was Christmas Eve 1990.   Operation Desert Shield.  I was in Saudi Arabia at King Khalid International Airport (KKIA), as Chaplain for a PATRIOT Missile Battalion (3-43ADA) out of Fort Bliss, TX. Someone knew something because we never thought we'd deploy in a million years. But as soon as Saddam crossed over into Kuwait we had guys on the ground in Riyadh within a week. I remember vividly waiting at Biggs Army Airfield at Fort Bliss, Texas for our flight to the Middle East. The wait was because some guy from Raytheon had to get there with a large pile of 'A' drive computer disks (he had about 40 it looked like to me), which he had to load onto the Patriot Missile Computers. Why?
The Patriot had always worked well before. We later learned that it was to make the Patriot Missile capable of shooting down another missile or rocket - in this case - someone knew that Saddam had SCUD rockets positioned to hamper our advance into Iraq. A Patriot missile had never shot another missile down before. All experimental. When he finally arrived about 0100, 50 of us loaded onto a C5 Starlifter Air Farce (yes - 'Farce' is spelled correctly) plane for the backwards ride to Dhahran, Saudi Arabia - then the vehicle march to Riyadh in the middle of the night. The C5 is a two story aircraft with 75 seats upstairs and you ride backwards. Didn't know if we were coming or going and my vehicle was actually in that same plane downstairs. Food was in small boxes the cheapskate Air Farce guys gave us while they had hot meals topside. Worried? Not us. Not until January when the Air Farce guys were all cheering that they had won the war from the air and the Army and Marines weren't needed. That cheering stopped two days later when the first round of five SCUDs came screaming over our heads toward their refueler aircraft while we're running for bunkers and our PATRIOTs are picking off the SCUDs one by one. Looking back now, I don't think we had an idea of how much danger we were in.

Back from my ADHD shuffle...Bob Hope.  What a guy.  I got to meet him up close and personal because he and his staff used my chapel tent to change and get ready for the show.   There were about 2,000 Soldiers and Airmen around the compound that day as we were waiting for Hope to arrive.  I got a wild hair and decided to go on the stage and tell a few jokes.  I also started to sing the Air Force Song about "going off into the wild blue yonder," but couldn't get anyone to chime in since I mangled the thing and sang about PATRIOT missiles shooting down those very same aircraft...oh well.  As I was in the process of getting booed here comes Bob Hope and his entourage driving around the corner.  

I got off the stage and went to my chapel tent and in he walks with his wife, daughter Dorthy (who he seemed to yell at alot),  Arin Tippen (a newcomer at the time), and holy cow!  Johnny Bench!!!   Man, was it ever autograph time.  Tippen sang some pretty good songs about "you lefties don't like the country then leave it," kind of stuff which made us pretty happy, then Bench got up there and did some bantoring with the crowd.  At about 8:00 P.M., Bob came out of the tent with his golf club of course and sat on the steps leading up to the stage.  He hung around there awhile and I was videoing the whole thing when after about 20 minutes Bench came down and got him to come on stage for his act.  He had the usual G.I. jokes which were pretty good.  He was swinging around his golf club and talking about the girls he couldn't bring with him because the Saudis didn't like the way they were dressed (we did).  

When he was done his wife came up on stage and in the 85 degree nighttime desert calm she sings 'White Christmas.'   The pictures of Bob Hope and Johnny Bench are from the net.  The one on the left of Mrs. Hope was one I took from the side of the stage.
Life's an adventure huh?