 Hi, this is Bob Hope with the USO story. For anybody who tuned in late and missed the first 30 years, stick around, there's more to come. Actually, I've got a special warm spot for the USO. We both started working for people in uniform about the same time, 1941. And we've both covered a lot of ground since then. I've been on the road so much, when I get a letter from my wife, it starts out, dear sir. But you may not know that the USO is serving more guys and gals in uniform in more locations today than ever before. In an average month, something like three million service people visit the USO facilities around the world. That kind of service takes a lot of people and most of them are unpaid. Volunteers, about 160,000 of them. I'm proud to be invited to bring you the story of the USO and it's 30 years of service, 30 years. That makes the USO just nine years younger than Jack Benny. What started it all was a thing called World War II and another thing that went with it called the draft. Qualifications were strict. If you could hear thunder and see lightning and had two teeth that hit, raise your right hand and repeat after me. The result was hundreds of thousands of new people in uniform. They had a huge job ahead of them. Where they were going, they'd need all the support the American people could give them. They got it. And one way they got it was, the USO had just come into being but it soon got into high gear. The USO brought the stars to the desert of North Africa and into the Pacific. With so many GIs to be reached, they couldn't be particular. They'd sign up anybody. Hey, khaki, come a bit of wacky. Why don't you get back in the sacky? There's room for two. Your nose and you. As the guys move forward, both in Europe and in the Pacific, the USO kept pace with it. Here's harmonica player Larry Adler 30 years ago. The violinist's work would have had a lot of poise for a nine-year-old. Just like today, there were a lot of groups that carried no big names. Just played their hearts out three and four shows a day for guys who really appreciated it. When Korea came along in the 1950s, the location was different, but the script was the same. Some pretty girls from home with maybe a sentimental song or two and a lot of clowning around. Like Satchel Page used to say, laughing is good for the gizzard. It's still the same today. Maybe the dancing's a little bit wilder, but it's the same effort that began in 1941. To bring a change to the day's danger of boredom, a few minutes to relax and get the message. And the message is the same, too. Somebody cares. Of course, shows and entertainment are only a small part of what the USO provides for people in uniform all over the world. It's quite a story. Let's take it from the top. Headquarters for the worldwide operation of the USO is here on East 52nd Street in New York. From here, the whole operation is coordinated. As you may know, USO stands for United Service Organizations. Six of them, the YMCA, the National Catholic Community Service, the National Association of Jewish Community Centers called JWB, the YWCA, the Salvation Army, the Travelers Aid. These joined together in 1941 for a purpose that hasn't changed, in their own words, to help serve the religious, spiritual, social welfare, educational, recreational, and entertainment needs of men and women in the armed forces. Then as now, this kind of service is much needed. The armed forces themselves do a lot to provide for spare time recreation on post or on base, but they recognize the obvious. For service people with free time, on post or on base is not where it's at. When I have a spare moment, I don't spend it hanging around the studio, so I can see why a GI's first move when he's got time off is out the gate. Luckily, he's got some place to go. Wherever they're based, it's pretty certain there's a USO club nearby, a good place to check into for a cup of hot coffee, or relax, chew the fat with the guys, or maybe choose something more substantial without spending a fortune, play a game of cards, or shoot a game of rotation, listen to some stereo, just sit and read, or on nights when it's not on the program, dance with a pretty girl. It sure beats walking around the streets, wondering where everybody went. All this is typical, but it's not the whole picture by a long shot. Take a big city like New York. Talk about all dressed up and no place to go. It can happen in big town, and it does. That's when that red, white, and blue USO sign can be a mighty welcome sight. One big attraction of the USO in New York and other big towns is the way it provides free tickets to every sort of entertainment and sports event, from the top Broadway hits to television shows and movies to major league baseball, pro football, basketball, hockey, you name it. There's also a big demand for help to servicemen and finding a decent place to stay at a price they can afford. The USO and co-operating hotels provide such help. And speaking of moving, skip across the continent of Fairbanks, Alaska, and it's a whole different situation. But the USO has the flexibility to fit its services to the local need. Not many USO operations offer dormitory facilities, but in Alaska, they're needed. So in Alaska, they're provided. Guys for remote duty stations, radar outposts, for example, can come into town for a weekend and have a warm, clean, and inexpensive place to stay. You spend a lot of time in the deep frozen boondocks and a change like the famous Sunday evening suppers that the Fairbanks USO is more than welcome. Just how much more you can see anytime you want to drop in. The activities and services are as varied as the locations. Take San Francisco and the Bay Area, for example. In addition to all the standard services to people in uniform, there's a program here that spotlight services by people in uniform. It's a three-way play where the USO helps service people, helps civilians, a switch that goes over big with everybody. Especially the old folks they visit as a regular part of the club's golden age activities. The guys in uniform and the young ladies of the USO, junior volunteers, give a great lift to the lives of these elderly citizens and find, of course, that the lift they get is greater still. In the same vein, the San Francisco USO helps to set it up for Navy guys in town to act as big brothers for a day. On a regular basis, guys from ships and port take wide-eyed kids from the city and show them where a sailor lives and works. It's still the USO serving the servicemen. What's better for a guy's morale than the smile on the face of a kid showing his appreciation from the very personal gift to somebody's time and attention? In San Antonio, the buildings which house the Bolivian and West German presentations at the Hemisphere Plaza have been given over to the USO. To become one of the most attractive clubs in the country, along with all its standard activities, this particular club makes a special event of holding periodic parties for servicemen who are patients at nearby Brook Hospital. A banquet like this does more than provide good eating. It provides tangible evidence to a recuperating serviceman that he still rates the attention and the gratitude of the country he serves. It's not too good. Live entertainment is a regular part of the program at the Schindler's. Games and contests keep things moving. And special prizes for the winners are donated by San Antonio Businessmen. The point is, the USO is designed to work for everybody. Those who serve in the present and those who service in the past has earned them a special measure of honor and respect. For another little-known aspect of the USO's help to service people, let's eavesdrop at the club in Boston. These people want a man to work all day Saturday and all day Sunday. Can you do that? Great, I can use the extra dough. Now, may I have your ID, please? Thank you. In Boston, service people who could use a little part-time employment and off-duty hours know where to go, the USO. USO still a man. The Boston Club has worked out an arrangement with local businesses that can use part-time workers to act as a placement service. Hi, I'm Stephen Amonson. This comes in handy, especially for young family men in uniform. The chance to add to his income on weekends or evenings is a real help. The USO is glad to open the door for them. Right at the street, and you'll go right by the office. Just park outside and give the keys to the girl and she'll give you more. In some places, it's not just part-time work the USO helps to find for people in uniform. In Baltimore, a meeting like this of local business executives and a USO staff member are a regular thing. As you know, it's pilot hope, jobs for men and women who may be coming out of the service. And I'd like your advice as to how we could do this. Our organization has a number of openings for fellows who wish to supervise clerical operations. Yes, we have jobs available in our company for overhead linemen, trainees, underground cable splicer, trainees, both male and female openings in our computer department where they would train for programming type work in addition to vacancies for typists, stenographers, key punch operators. Hello, John, how are you? How you doing, sir? By the way, how did you know about our USO program for servicemen? I was given this brochure from the separation center. I see. And you are ready to go out of the service. Yes, sir, in the next few months. I see. Do you have any background in training of what particular training? Well, I received some computer training while I was in the service and that was my military occupation at the time. And then I had two years of college before I was drafted. Splendid. Servicemen and women nearing the end of their tour of duty come into the Baltimore USO and talk about what they'd like to do, what skills they have to offer. The USO takes it from there. I also noticed from your application that you have completed several years of college. Do you plan to continue your education? Yes, sir, I had two years. On a regular basis, the Baltimore Club brings together servicemen who need jobs and firms who need men who not only have matured through a tour of service, but now that have service obligation behind them and can settle down to build a career without the likelihood of being interrupted by greetings from the draft board. For a final stateside example, let's go to my town, Los Angeles. Actually, this is a service club at nearby Fort MacArthur, but the essential ingredients, the music and the refreshments and the young ladies are all courtesy of the Los Angeles USO. And without music and refreshments and young ladies, what's left of a dance is no great morale booster. Especially that last item. These gals are USO junior volunteers, typical of the thousands all across the country who make the dances and other activities of the USO the successful and popular events they are. The junior volunteers are just that, volunteers unpaid except by the satisfaction of helping and the appreciation of the guys who know that as long as there's a USO around, they're never totally strangers wherever they go. We had a couple of days I could try really telling you about all the different ways the USO serves people in uniform. But you get the general idea. They look for what's needed and work out ways to meet the needs. And they don't just do it here in the United States. The USO has 10 permanent clubs in Europe and a popular one with anyone in uniform close enough to get to it is, but of course. The one in Paris, right in the Champs Elysees. The USO is headquarters for service people and their families in Paris. It's geared to set up tours, provide tips and what to see and where to stay and do it within the budget of the average service man or service family. And in line with that policy of searching out special needs and meeting them, the parish USO has one service that's kind of special. People come from all over. They don't always connect. I was supposed to meet my wife at or the airport, and I've not been looking for about an hour. I just can't seem to locate her. Do you know what flight she's coming in on? I don't know the flight number, but it was doing it 10 out of 10 from New York City. The parish USO's people lost and found works day or night and has a direct link with the Paris police. It works. Hello, it's Audrey. Yes. I'm looking for... Wait, what's the name of your wife? Johnston, it's Johnston. Madame Champs Elysees. She's got a six-year-old boy with her, also. She's got a six-year-old boy with her, also. She's got a six-year-old boy with her, also. She's got a six-year-old boy with her, also. Yes. Yes, wait a minute. Your wife is on the phone. Hello? Hello there, where have you been? What? I haven't been looking for about an hour, and I just always must have missed some place somewhere. See a need set up a way to serve it is the same in Italy. The Rome USO is headquarters for a massive flow of army visitors from duty stations in Germany. The need here, or one of them, is to meet a constant demand for package tours. Service people and families who want to take advantage of their opportunity to see the eternal city, to stay in it a few days, get the feel of its combination of antiquity and 20th century bustle. The USO can handle the whole thing for tour groups, a place to stay, tours by bus around foot, lunches and so on. And to meet every real need, the prices are really low. For most of these service people, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to come from a duty station in Europe is one thing. It's a morale builder, sure, but it's also a builder of greater understanding between nations. You can get a greater feeling of kinship with people when you go among the evidences of their influence of world history, including your own. Breathe in a little of an ancient heritage. Look and listen and feel at first hand. As the USO in Rome serves mainly army people, in Naples the big word is the fleet's in. And sailors on station in the Mediterranean make the Naples USO a busy place. The club here is new and attractive and offers all the services that guys in uniform have come to know. They can expect from the USO anywhere. But it's also the headquarters for what the USO in Italy calls its flyaway clubs, serving the Mediterranean. Say an element of the sixth fleet is scheduled to tie up for a few days in Barcelona where there's no permanent USO. From Naples, a team will go out and set up to serve the guys in bell-bottom pants when they come ashore. It may be a van or booth which can be set up dockside to furnish refreshments, a welcoming smile, and information on local customs and attractions. Or it may be if the number of sailors involved warrants it that a local restaurant, what have you, will be rented and a standard though temporary USO club set up for it as long as the fleet's important. Either way, the flyaway club operations working out in Naples provide a welcome for men on duty in the Mediterranean wherever they drop anchor. Winding up our USO sampler in Europe, we jump to Frankfurt, Germany. The club here is newly open and furnished and serves as a major off-duty headquarters for army people stationed in Germany. But we're not going inside. Everything you think is there is there. I said earlier that the USO story is a lot more than just the story of USO shows. But people who go out to deliver some entertainment, the breath of home and the personal interest of somebody who cared enough to make the trip, this is still an important part of the story, today more than ever. This is one example that means a lot to guys a long way from home and with plenty of time on their hands. The USO calls these handshaker tours. Usually just one person, somebody whose face the guys will recognize. Somebody who just by being there to shake a hand, shoot debris for a minute, take a message for the family back home, can put a lift in a long day. For the guys, just the fact that people care enough to donate their time and come halfway around the world says it all. On the average, the USO sends out five of these person-to-person tours each month. On and peeking over the hill, I bet you sure it all And how about the guys from Spebsquad? The Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barbershop Quartet Singing in America. And if you can say that, you're fit to drive home. Where sure we love each other, that's the way we'll always be. These groups are made to order for a USO tour. No props, no scenery, no instrument cases, just four guys in close harmony and the show is on the road. Travel alone, singing a song, side by side. Oh, we don't know what's coming tomorrow. Another important source of traveling talent for the USO in recent years is the college campus. If the guys in uniform can't get to the living theater, kids like these are ready and able to bring it to them. Well done. We'll have one more rehearsal tomorrow. All right, we leave Monday at two o'clock from the school parking lot and we have some luggage stickers for you to put on your suitcases and please watch that weight in those suitcases. Dozens of college groups go out every year to take live drama and music to people in uniform overseas. And of course, every year brings a new schedule for the so-called name shows. I forget the name of this one, but it tried out its material for 1971 on a captive audience at West Point. USO shows and tours go all over the world, of course, but a lot of them are scheduled for Vietnam. Here, the USO has the most active and popular clubs and lounges in its history. Take the one in Saigon, for example. It's one of the busiest spots in the city, no wonder. The list of services offered inside is longer than Crosby's bank statement. It's a place to let the air conditioning dry your shirt while you find out what's happening or going to happen in the way of entertainment. The facilities themselves are familiar, all same state-side USO. But there are important additions. The telephone links, which the USO provided in Vietnam, are the only commercial phone connections with the states. You call your best girl from here and when the operator says long distance, she's not just whistling Dixie. Here is everywhere the services are adapted to the needs. A popular example is poor boy night when a guy can get a big meal for a quarter. These are usually held toward the end of the month when payday is still a week or so away. Additional clubs are scattered through South Vietnam, all offering the same kinds of services, but each with its own flavor. As always, the tape machines provided for servicemen to send a message home, not just in their own words, but in the sound of their own words. Get a heavy workout. At Cameron Bay's air terminal, the USO operates a lounge that's open around the clock. At first glance, it's pretty much like any other USO lounge in a travel terminal. Free coffee, inexpensive snacks, and ice cream. But suppose you look around more closely. What you'll find is probably the world's only full-time professional checker player, lady type. Set on the only one in the employee of the USO. That's her job, just to be there, to take on anybody who thinks they can play checkers. Anybody who can beat her wins a prize. They don't give out a lot of prizes, though. The USO people are always thinking. At Queen On, for example. Some of the gals dreamed up an operation that has grown into a regular thing, and it's mighty popular with the men at serves. What happens is twice a month, the team of gals take off for the boondocks. Really isolated places, maybe 25 guys or so, making an outpost in the middle of nowhere. The whole thing is coordinated through the chaplains. But the men themselves usually don't know what they've got company coming. Until they look around and here comes a chapel with. No, it can't be. It is. Two broads. What's that stuff they're unloading? Just a home-style backyard cookup. But the effect on combat troops who've often spent weeks on field rations with only themselves and Charlie for company is just about what you'd expect. They appreciate it. They appreciate it. That's the kind of understatement you have to rely on when you try to say what the USO has meant to three generations of Americans in uniform. The USO today says to them the same thing it said to those hundreds of thousands of guys in the 40s. It says, somebody knows you're where you are and what you're doing for us here and we care. With a message like that, how can you lose? Like I said, the USO and I have covered a lot of ground together and I'm glad of this chance to pass along the thanks of the guys and gals in uniform, literally millions of them who've gotten that message the USO delivers and felt a little bit better for it. Now to close things out, I want to introduce the current president of the USO, Emmett O'Donnell. Actually, I'm glad to see him make good. I knew him when he was just a struggling four-star general in the Air Force and a great one. It's all yours, Rosie. Thank you, Bob. Not only for the introduction and this minute of airtime, but also for the years and miles you've left behind you, all resounding with the healthy sound of fighting men laughing. Our thanks also to the thousands of show business and sports world figures who generously donate their time, talent and genuine interest to making USO the outstanding service it has been for 30 years. I would also like to thank all of the American people who care enough to make certain that USO is there, no matter where the troops go. They send the important message, we know you're there, we haven't forgotten you, we care. So it's we at the USO who are indebted to you, the American public. Thank you for three decades of support. We are going to do our best to continue to deserve it.