Paul Kengor’s column “Recalling Bob Hope at Christmas” (Dec. 18, TribLive) brought back some great memories for me. I’m a native Pittsburgher and vividly remember Christmas shopping with my mother and grandmother at Kaufmann’s, Horne’s and Gimbel’s in the 1950s. Seeing the wonderful display windows and running amok in their Christmas “toy lands.”
Twenty years later I was fortunate to attend a Bob Hope USO Christmas show. In 1970 I was in the Navy and stationed on the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy CVA-67 in the Mediterranean. We were the host ship for the show. We were anchored in a bay in Crete with 10 other ships. Bob Hope and the entire troupe stayed aboard my ship. Hope did an impromptu monologue in a passageway outside my workshop. The day of the show we had 15,000 sailors on the flight deck for the show. There is a memorial to Hope entertaining Vietnam troops in San Diego on the waterfront next to the USS Midway museum.
Mr.Kengor: Keep up the good work, and to Bob Hope, “Thanks for the memories.”
Richard Sheats
Ligonier