Amy Newmark - Chicken Soup for the Soul: Military Families: 101 Stories about the Force Behind the Forces

Changing the world one story at a time

www.chickensoup.com

T hroughout his celebrated life, Bob Hope, my grandfather, embodied the American Dream. Through hard work and great talent, he rose from humble means to become, at one time, the most famous man on earth. He was a talented singer-dancer-actor-comedian. He was an innovator in every medium he touched: stage, radio, TV, film and stand-up comedy. But it was through his United Service Organizations (USO) tours to entertain service members abroad that he encountered his favorite audience and created his most enduring legacy.

During the week of Christmas, 1987, I accompanied my grandfather on one of his last tours with the USO. We flew around the globe that week flying west from Los Angeles to arrive eight days later in Los Angeles. Bob Hope performed seven shows along the way, in various remote corners of the globe, in the heat of an air base in the Philippines, in the vast waters of the Persian Gulf, on a snow covered Army base in Northern Italy. The schedule was unrelenting: set up, break down, sleep on the plane.

I was seventeen, helping with cue cards and costumes, and I had never known such exhaustion. I came home and slept for two days. My grandfather spent that week reviewing hundreds of pages of possible material, writing, fine-tuning and performing seven shows flawlessly, meeting with service men and women and statesmen, and even attending a midnight Christmas mass in the weight room in the bottom of the USS Midway aircraft carrier in the middle of the Persian Gulf. At the time, he was eighty-four years old.

Thats when I really saw that he was cut from a different and extraordinary cloth. I saw a tireless work ethic, a roll-up-your-sleeves and do-what-needs-to-be-done attitude, a serve-those-who-serve humility, a commitment to choosing to comfort others over ones own comfort, a total lack of narcissism or vanity, and an absolute inability for it to even occur to him to complain. He knew that he wasnt just bringing jokes and Super Bowl Cheerleaders, but that he was also bringing humanity and courage and home. He took his talents to the center of a crisis and used them to heal. He had a wonderful time doing it.

And the audience had a wonderful time receiving it. If you look on YouTube and watch a clip from Bob Somewhere in the Pacific Hope 1943 and then watch a clip of Bob Persian Gulf Hope 1987, youll hear the same roar from the audience of service men and women. It is a thrilling, deafening, adoring sound. It is the sound of thousands of human souls, far from home, in a frightening, uncertain terrain welcoming this man, as their brothers, mothers, uncles, sisters, fathers, and grandfathers welcomed this same man to their own battlefields. This man, who in his forties, in his eighties and in every decade between, flew away from ease and comfort to strengthen their lonely, dedicated hearts at Christmas, to lift not just the morale of his audience, but the morale of his nation and to do it with tireless grace, wit and charm.

Only in America, he told me on that trip, as we made our way through monarchies and flew over dictatorships. Only in America could a stonemasons son from Cleveland who left school after the third grade to support his family, have this life that I have now. He loved this country. He loved how it rewarded his hard work and talent. He never took for granted his freedom and he loved the men and women who defended it.

It was that trip and his commitment that sparked in me a desire to serve. We know that many veterans returning from war are not thriving in civilian life. There are plenty of reasons why and many ways in which they need support, but the fact remains they need and deserve it. Through the Bob & Dolores Hope Foundation, I am honored to partner with charities that feed, clothe and shelter veterans and help them to thrive through meaningful work.

I hope that you enjoy the stories relayed here in the pages of Chicken Soup for the Soul: Military Families. I am pleased to know that a portion of the book sales will go to support the USO and their commitment to strengthen Americas military service members by keeping them connected to family, home and country. Such a noble cause! And, an accurate description of Bob Hopes greatest legacy. May these stories not just move and entertain you, but strengthen you as well, wherever you may be, currently deployed, returned from deployment, or holding down the fort at home as a spouse, child, parent or friend of a service man or woman. You are, as the USO says, the force behind the forces.

~Miranda Hope

Vice President, Bob & Dolores Hope Foundation

Family is not an important thing; its everything.

~Michael J. Fox

I n December 1999, with orders in hand, my twenty-five-year-old son Ty boarded a plane in Kosovo and headed for Germany. For the first time, he would spend Christmas outside the United States and apart from relatives.

Because I didnt understand how the military operated, I envisioned the worst. Would my son spend an icy Christmas Eve outdoors on guard duty? Would he eat a cold turkey sandwich alone in his apartment?

I shouldnt have fretted.

The day before Christmas, Ty called home. Mom, a chief warrant officer and his wife invited me to dinner tomorrow. They also invited another single lieutenant and two married lieutenants and their wives. I knew youd be worried Id spend Christmas alone, so I want you to know I have plans.

The chief and his family gave Ty the gift of hospitality. They also gave me a present because, for the first time, I beheld the strength of military family life.

Ive caught other glimpses during Tys years of service. Some revealed simple acts of kindness. When Ty deployed, his friends stateside checked each week to make sure his car still ran and his townhouse pipes hadnt frozen. He did the same for them when he came back and they deployed.

Ty phoned the day he returned to the United States from an overseas deployment. As a thirty-two-year-old captain, hed taken and brought back 163 soldiers under his command. Most were between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two.

How are they doing? I asked.

Mostly okay. They have to contact me if they get into trouble. Saturday at 0200, one of my soldiers called. The first thing he said was, Sir, I wrecked my car.

I marveled. If you ever have kids, youll already know how to deal with them when theyre that age.