An Army of Stars Salutes the Troops

A young Air Force sergeant stood Friday evening in an immense, festive tent that contained a modern-day, movie studio re-creation of an old USO canteen. All around him movie stars mingled with soldiers. Outside, the sky was slashed by spotlights.

“I’ve been welcomed home twice,” said Snag Aflague, 29, of Guam, who returned from Saudi Arabia three weeks ago. “We’re getting what the Vietnam vets should have gotten.”

The scene was Universal Studios, where more than 6,000 soldiers and their families gathered for a star-studded, politician-studded program called, “Welcome Home America” and featuring President George Bush. The two-hour extravaganza will air on ABC-TV April 14.

At Universal Studios Amphitheater in the afternoon, soldiers who fought in the Persian Gulf--and troops that spent the brief war on call in the United States--were all “welcomed home” by Bush, former presidents Ronald Reagan and Gerald R. Ford and several top military officials. Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra and Little Richard all made appearances too.

For Aflague, the bash wasn’t the first welcome home party. Relatives and friends had greeted him in Guam, singing “God Bless America” at a local bar. People he didn’t know bought him drinks.

He recalled taking a beer offered him by a grateful citizen and handing it to a disillusioned Vietnam vet, who told him: “You got yellow ribbons and flags, but we got nuttin’.”

Tony Danza, one of dozens of entertainers at the Universal show, said during the party, “I think this is also the perfect time to welcome the vets who never received this kind of reception when they got home from Vietnam.”

The program commemorated the 50th anniversary of the USO.

The first USO club in the country opened in Hollywood after the USO was chartered by Congress in 1941 to serve the nation’s military personnel.

But when many Americans turned against U.S. participation in Vietnam, support for the USO faded. By the late 1980s, the traditional chaperoned dances and bingo games were eliminated.

“The Gulf War was a great boon for us,” said Amy Adler, a spokeswoman for World USO, as she finished videotaping a public service announcement with the Pointer Sisters backstage. “It had gotten to the point that there were people that didn’t even know that the USO existed.”

She said a private fund-raiser for about a thousand people at Universal Studios on Friday raised approximately $2.5 million for the USO. Other donations have come in from school children, office parties, and shopping mall operators who have given coins from wishing wells.

Several entertainers said after the show that one reason for the effusive response at welcome-home ceremonies is a collective guilt over lack of support for troops who fought in Vietnam.

“A great deal of this outpouring is not just for the Gulf War vet. It’s for the Vietnam vet,” said Linda Jenner, co-author of a hit song and videotape called “Voices That Care.”

Bob Hope, accepting a USO award from Bush, told the President, “You’re probably the finest commander in chief I’ve ever known.”

Hope has been entertaining troops since the days of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

“James Michener ends his war novel, ‘The Bridges at Toko-Ri,’ by asking, where did we get such men?” Bush said to the men and women in uniform in the audience.

“Well, I look out at these thousands of faces . . . and all I can do is echo his admiration and pride: Where did we get such men and women?”

Bush, who was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross during World War II as a Navy pilot, is honorary chairman of the USO. His father, Prescott Bush, was recruited by Roosevelt to help raise money for the USO in 1942.

On Friday, the President, described USO volunteers as “our point of light.”

Shortly before the program began, paparazzi shutters snapped as actress Brooke Shields kissed Bush on the cheek.

“I put my hand out to shake hands out of respect,” Shields said later. “He leaned over for a kiss.”

She said she and Bush have frequently met socially, and when she went to brush her lipstick from his cheek, she said he told her: “Leave it.”

“He was sweet,” she added.

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Correction

According to Mrs. Hobart Bosworth, lobbyist and coordinator of USO Volunteers, the first club set up by the Hollywood community for servicemen was located in a tent in Pershing Square in 1941. The Hollywood Bob Hope USO was established in 1945.

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