Everybody's friend, Bob Hope, was the commedian of commedians, the comic icon of our generation, and such a friend to the troops!

The Bob Hope Radio Shows were heard from January 1935 to April 1955 on Blue Network, CBS, and NBC. In the early 50's he was also very popular on television, which is where most of you got to know him. In honor of his life, we're airing a special program with Jack Benny.

A hundred and two years ago on May 29, was born in England as young “Leslie Townes Hope.” First brought to America at the age of four by his stone-mason father and his mother (a former performer on the Welsh stage) Leslie soon adopted the name Bob to avoid ribbings by the other kids. Rising through a series of odd jobs, including that of Golden Gloves boxer, Hope found his way to the vaudeville stage, radio studio, and Hollywood set, to become one of the greatest stars of his day.

On May 6th 1941 Bob made the first of what would become a 50-year tradition in remote appearances benefiting our armed forces. Here's the story from www.BobHope.com.

Bob Hope's unwavering commitment to the morale of America's servicemen and women is entertainment history, indeed, world history. Many say 'legend.' For nearly six decades, be the country at war or at peace, Bob, with a band of Hollywood gypsies, has traveled the globe to entertain our service men and women.

The media dubbed him "America's No. 1 Soldier in Greasepaint." To the GIs, he was "G.I. Bob" and their clown hero. It began in May, 1941 when Bob, with a group of performers, went to March Field, California, to do a radio show for airmen stationed there.

Throughout World War II, with only two exceptions, all of Bob's radio shows were performed and aired from military bases and installations throughout the United States and theaters of war in Europe and the South Pacific. His first trip into the combat area was in 1943 when he and his small USO troupe - Frances Langford, Tony Romano and Jack Pepper visited US military facilities in England, Africa, Sicily and Ireland. In later years his itinerary included the South Pacific.

Bob began what was to become a Christmas custom in 1948. He, with wife Dolores, went to Germany at the request of then Secretary of the Air Force, Stuart Symington, to entertain the troops involved in the Berlin Airlift.

With the end of the Vietnam conflict in sight, Hope hailed his 1972 trip as his "last Christmas show." But each Christmas that followed, he was somewhere in the country doing a show at a military base or veterans hospital. In 1983 the call came from Beirut and Hope was "on the road again." In 1987, Hope flew around the world to entertain servicemen and women in the Pacific. Atlantic and Indian Oceans and in the Persian Gulf.

He embarked on a goodwill tour in May, 1990 to entertain military personnel stationed in England, Russia, and Germany. At Christmas that year, he and wife Dolores, were in Saudi Arabia entertaining the men and women of "Operation Desert Storm." 1994 was a good year for Bob, His "Bob Hope: The First 90 Years," produced by daughter Linda Hope, won an Emmy. And he returned to his native England for a personal appearance tour in June, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II.

1996 marked the publication of Bob's collection of Presidential humor called "Dear Prez, I Wanna Tell Ya", and in November, he aired his 296th television special for NBC, Bob Hope Laughing with the Presidents." The show featured appearances by President and Mrs. Clinton, President and Mrs. Bush, President and Mrs. Ford, Julie Nixon and David Eisenhower. Bob's co-host was Tony Danza.

May 1997, New Orleans - Bob stood by as Dolores christened the USNS Bob Hope (AKR 300), the first of a new class of ships named after Bob. Not to be outdone, one month later the US Air Force dedicated a new C-17 in his name. (In 2001, the C-17 the 'Spirit of Bob Hope,' transported the pilots and crew of the reconnaissance plane downed in China back safe and sound to Hawaii.)

Five times Bob has been honored by the United States Congress. But, in October 1997, Bob received one of his greatest tributes when Resolution 75 was unanimously passed by members of both houses making him an Honorary Veteran - the first individual so honored in the history of the United States. He was feted in the US Capitol Rotunda by members of congress, military personnel and veterans. The next day, Bob, family and friends were guests in the oval office for the signing of the resolution by President Clinton.

Bob's next visit to Washington, D.C. was in May 2000 when he officially opened the Bob Hope Gallery of American Enterainment at the Library of Congress. In July 2001, the 'Pentagon' (US Army Adjutant General Corps) paid a visit to Bob Hope's home in Toluca Lake, California for the presentation of the Order of Horatio Gates Gold Medal for his life-long contributions toward maintaining the high morale of soldiers around the world. And on his 99th birthday, May 29, 2002; The Chapel at the Los Angeles National Cemetery was named The Bob Hope Veterans Chapel.

Of course, as we all know Bob Hope died July 2003 in at his home in Tuluca Lake, California. Thanks for the memories... and for those military men and women who were in his overseas shows, the memories are far more vivid and sweet. And it's appropriate that we remember on this Memorial Day weekend which includes Mr. Hope's birthday.

"KATE SMITH." The mention of her name still evokes a warm feeling of nostalgia in the hearts of millions who are old enough recall Kate and her thrilling renditions of popular ballads -- and her powerful, outgoing personality and infectious laughter. Her autographed publicity photo shown here is a prized part of my radio memorabilia collection.

An untiring patriot, Kate Smith was honored by every President from Roosevelt, who called her an "American treasure", to Reagan, who gave her the highest civilian award in the nation, the Medal of Freedom. During the Second World War, she was personally credited with selling six hundred million dollars in Defense Bonds. Do you have any idea of what $ 600,000,000 was in the early 1940's?

Kate was called the "First Lady of Song" or "America's Southern Songbird" by her peers. Voted one of the three most beloved and important women of her time, Kate Smith was the very embodiment of the American spirit and an inspiration to millions everywhere. Her popularity and her music transcended a half century, all the way from vaudeville to soft rock. She introduced over six hundred popular songs. Yes, you read correctly -- 600 popular songs! More than twenty of her records were million sellers -- back in a culture when selling a million records really meant something.

As a true pioneer in both radio and television, her importance as a public personality is unsurpassed in the annals of broadcasting history. She is undeniably an American original! Can you believe that Kate Smith was more powerful as leader, entertainer, and spokesperson for all America than any one since including Ophra Winfrey, Sen. Hillary Clinton, or Condalisa Rice. Hard to believe, but it's very true.

Kate had been making records since 1926 but was discovered in 1930 by Columbia Records vice president Ted Collins, who became her partner and manager who developed her public career which included her radio programs. Kate was an immediate success on radio and she soon broke the record for the number of continous performances at the legendary Palace Theatre.

She soon had the most popular radio variety program, The Kate Smith Hour, which aired weekly from 1937-45. At the same time she had the No. 1 daytime radio show, the midday Kate Smith Speaks, a news and commentary program. Everyone listened to this show which she did with her agent, sidekick, and beloved friend, Ted Collins. She talked about issues before talk radio, gave the editorialized news, entertained and interviewed guests. In 1950 Kate entered television with a Monday-Friday afternoon variety show, The Kate Smith Hour (1950-54). It proved so popular that NBC gave her a prime-time show on Wednesday evenings, The Kate Smith Evening Hour. Her last TV series was CBS’s The Kate Smith Show, a weekly half-hour musical series in 1960.

Kate's biggest hits were River, Stay ’Way From My Door (1931), The Woodpecker Song (1940), The White Cliffs of Dover (1941), I Don’t Want to Walk Without You (1942), There Goes That Song Again (1944), Seems Like Old Times (1946), and Now Is the Hour (1947).

Her theme song was "When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain," whose lyrics she helped write. Irving Berlin regarded the song she made most famous, "God Bless America," as his most important composition. In 1938 Kate predicted that the song would still be sung long after all of us are gone—and it surely will.

In the fifties and sixties, she began making LP albums, with such best sellers as Kate Smith at Carnegie Hall (1963), How Great Thou Art (1965), and America’s Favorites: Kate Smith/Arthur Fiedler/Boston Pops (1967). You can hear the entire Kate Smith at Carnagie Hall on Norm's Radio. My prize collection of "mint" LP albums includes all of Kate Smith's albums from the 1950's and 1960's as well as many of her 78's and some of the sheet music that used to be on every piano. I also have a full collection of Guy Lombardo, Wayne King, and Fred Waring LP's. I'd be honored to send you a CD of some of them. All you need to do is send me your address and I'll get one off to you.

Kate was a regular part of the home I grew up in -- we had her receipe books, 78rpm records, sheet music, books, listened to her radio programs, and watched her television shows. Her photo was in all the magazines and on billboards endorsing various products as Michael Jordon or Tiger Woods are today.

Kate Smith has a passion for wood inboard boats. I knew that as a boy as I knew that Guy Lombardo was a champion speedboat driver and owner. Kate owned a 1929 Chris Craft and loved it. As I remember she had it on a lake in upstate New York and was photographed with it often. Restoration Hardware had one of the photos some five years ago AND I DIDN'T BUY IT? I found a great photograph on the Internet that was made possible by Kate's official web site and association. I have a link to it below.

Kate Smith had a voice you never forgot once you heard it. Be sure to click the audio above and listen to 30 minutes of her 1968 concert in Carnagie Hall. It will introduce the youngun's to a jewel they missed. And to those who know....? a wonderful moment of memory and maybe a tear or two.

This passage has always meant a lot to me. Jesus said it as part of his teaching about the vine and the branches and how we need to be grafted into him spiritually. Jesus was laying the groundwork helping the disciples grasp why he would die on the cross for a purpose – to take away the sin of those who ask for that gift.

But it also is a beautiful verse to use in trying to describe the intimate sacrifice many have been asked to make down through the ages. To die for someone or some truth that is essential to life and freedom.

The men and women of WW2 were my heroes. I was seven years old at Pearl Harbor and just turned 11 when it ended in August 1945. I didn’t understand the horror and injustice of what was happening in many of the battles or that there were always the "innocent" who suffered. I just saw and felt the adventure and challenge of the moment. I loved all our service men and women -- especially the Commandoes like those to took Point du Hoc at Normandy.

But my folks also made me understand that many involved in the war, including "Rosie the riveter," were in factories making tanks rather than Chryslers and war supplies rather that Norge appliances and buying bonds to make it all possible. At Jefferson Grade School in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin we all brought our dimes every Friday to buy a "defense stamp" to paste in our Defense Bond booklet. When we had $18.50 in ten-cent stamps pasted in we turned it in at the bank for a $25 bond certificate. We also saved cooking grease (especially bacon) and turned it in at the butcher shop for it to end up as one of the raw materials for nitro-glycerine. Tin foil? Every boy had a ball of it. We pealed it away from the wax backing that wrapped cigarette packs and chewing gum. But that's immaterial compared to "giving one's life for a friend.

But so many willingly and obediently put themselves in harms way -- and laid down their lives and died for our personal freedom.

There are those who are willing to give their lives for someone special or for a cause they believe in. We see it in the news almost every day.

Here's a question. Is the sacrifice of a murderous, suicidal terrorist the same as one who lays his or her life on the line for the freedom and liberty? We could have an interesting and exciting discussion here. What gives meaning to the sacrifice of a life is the altar that it has been placed on – the reason the life was willingly given.

During this weekend, take time to remember what has gone before to give us the freedom and liberty we have had in this country. I’ve provided some excellent historical and inspirational web sites for those who are serious about Memorial Day.

In the early part of the last century, my mother went to the cemetery to “decorate” the graves of family and the military who gave their lives in the Civil War and WW1. Red silk poppies were worn in the lapel, red geraniums were planted and small flags and bunting laid on tombstones. It was called Decoration Day. Now, we call it Memorial Day.(NP)

In July 1862, after the Seven Days battles at Harrison's Landing (near Richmond), Virginia, the wounded Commander of the 3rd Brigade, 1st Division, 5th Army Corps, Army of the Potomac, General Daniel Butterfield reworked, with his bugler Oliver Wilcox Norton, another bugle call titled "Scott Tattoo" to create "Taps."

He thought that the regular bugle call for Lights Out was too formal. "Taps" was adopted throughout the Army of the Potomac and finally confirmed by orders. Soon other Union units began using "Taps" and even a few Confederate units began using it as well.

There are no words to “Tap”s but these two verses are commonly used.

Day is done, gone the sun,
From the hills, from the lake, From the skies.
All is well, safely rest, God is nigh.

Go to sleep, peaceful sleep,
May the soldier or sailor, God keep.
On the land or the deep, Safe in sleep.

Shouldn’t we be outraged that God is mentioned in these wonderful lyrics? How could such a thing happen? The arrogance of those Christian like people! But I've always been told there aren't many atheists on the front line of battle.

Listen to "TAPS" by clicking the link below and visit Merchants page by clicking the next link.

We need to realize what is happening. I remember when there were still Civil War Veterans and Spanish American War Veterans. All the WW1's are gone and this generation is the next. I want to thank my niece, Christine Shaw, who lives in Flagstaff, AZ for sending this simple, sincere, and moving website.

Click the first link below to read and listen to a moving story and photographs that this Doctor has put together. Then click the second link that will allow you to listen to some excellent radio excerpts from WW2.

Below is an excellent story by Ronnie Thomas, a reporter for the Decatur Daily, Decatur Alabama. It's about "one of those special people we are losing. The story was written for last fall's Veteran's Day.

Wallace Willingham was 65 years old before he began to say much about his experiences in World War II. And then it was only at the prodding of his children. As youngsters, they tore apart their father's book about the Army's 87th Infantry Division, hoping to learn at least something of what their dad endured, after he balked at their questions.

"Were you ever shot at?" they would ask.

"Sometimes," he'd say.

So that his grandchildren and great-grandchildren also would know what he did in the war, he gathered a cache of old material, including maps, newspaper clippings, letters and photographs from storage to show them. The framed documents now occupy a place of honor on a den wall of his Betty Street Southwest home. As American soldiers battle insurgents in Iraq, the retired minister prays for them, and he honors them. He bonds with them, too, and he believes they are as much of a "greatest generation" as he was.

And he realizes that some toss "hero" about loosely. "A hero is one who does what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, regardless of the consequences," he said. "Our men and women in Iraq are heroes."

The Army drafted Willingham, now 78, out of Jacksonville High School in 1944 as an 11th-grader. He said he could have gotten a deferment because of farming, but he was ready to go.

"Anyway, who could have imagined a Depression-era Alabama farm boy getting a ride on the Queen Mary?" he said.

The luxury ship that the Allies transformed to a troop carrier docked in Scotland. In January 1945, Willingham crossed the English Channel to Le Havre, France. His unit pushed into Belgium, where fierce fighting continued in the aftermath of the major German offensive at Bastogne, known as the Battle of the Bulge.

While holding a position on a hillside in Saint-Hubert, west of Bastogne, Willingham watched famed Gen. George S. Patton Jr. riding in a jeep, reviewing the troops. Later, as Willingham's unit prepared to join the attack on the Siegfried Line — Adolph Hitler's fortification along the French and German border — Patton came for a speech to the commanders of several divisions of his 3rd Army, to "tell them what we were going to be facing." Willingham said Patton noted, "We're going to Berlin and raise the American flag, but there will be some dog tags brought back."

Willingham recounted a somewhat humorous incident that occurred near the Mosel River when he and fellow scout John Sherrer of Queens, N.Y., and four others went on patrol to nab a German soldier to interrogate about troop movements.

"It was dark, and we came upon an older fellow dressed in a uniform," he said. "We returned to camp with a local firefighter. A newspaper account ran the headline, '87th captures fire department.' But our officers told us not to fret, that he was as good as an SS trooper in giving us what we needed. We took him back, thanked him and released him."

On another patrol, Willingham and another soldier walked down a road when an 88 mm shell dropped between them. "We would have been gone for sure, but luckily, it was a dud," he said. "All I could think of at the moment was that mother had me on a prayer list at church. And I pressed the little Gideon Bible that I carried in my jacket pocket closer."

Nicknamed "Tuffy" by the men in his platoon, the scrappy Willingham crossed the Rhine River near Rheims, Germany, on March 25, 1945, his 19th birthday. "As we fought to hold our ground, and it became more desperate for the Germans the tougher the war became," he said, "we faced five counterattacks, at times the enemy coming at us with fixed bayonets that involved some hand-to-hand combat."

Willingham's outfit drove south of Berlin and pushed to the Czechoslovakian border, where they met Russian soldiers. The war in Europe ended in May 1945, and after a 30-day leave, Willingham prepared to be a part of the force that would invade Japan. But atomic bombs dropped on two Japanese cities in early August forced surrender the next month.

Only after he felt that his mission was complete did Willingham seek help for frostbite, which he suffered in one of his legs fighting during the bitter winter. He spent the last months of 1945 in a hospital at Camp Atterberry, Ind., near Indianapolis, where the Army discharged him.

Among his medals is the Bronze Star, which he received "for meritorious achievement in ground combat against an armed enemy."

A customer tells the clerk, "I'd like some Polish sausage."

The clerk looks at him and says, "Are you Polish?"

The customer, clearly offended, says, "Well, yes I am. But let me ask you, if I had asked for Italian sausage, would you ask me if I was Italian? Or if I had asked for German sausage, would you ask me if I was German? Or if I had asked for a taco, would you ask if I was Mexican? Huh? Would ya??"

The clerk says, "Well, no."

With deep self-righteous indignation, the customer replied, "Well, all right then, why the _ _ _ _ did you ask me if I'm Polish when I asked for Polish sausage????"

"Because this is a hardware store."

WE GUARANTEE YOU CAN SET ALL YOUR CLOCKS BY IT'S ACCURACY -- EVEN YOUR ATOMIC CLOCKS AND CELL PHONES! It will give you information from the time zone your computer is set on.