Veterans Hope to Fund Bob Hope Monument

In October 1944, John Ibe was a 23-year-old enlisted man preparing for battle on the aircraft carrier St. Lo near the Admiralty Islands in the South Pacific. And then a funny thing happened--Bob Hope showed up.

“He gave us a performance that was unforgettable,” remembers Ibe, now 80, and head of a family real estate development firm in San Diego. “Some of the guys I was sitting with that day, that was among their last memories.” Two weeks later, a Japanese kamikaze pilot slammed into Ibe’s carrier and sank it during the Battle of Leyte Gulf, which claimed nearly 900 Americans. He clung to life among the wreckage and was rescued a couple of hours later.

Now, Ibe and three other veterans of that pivotal naval battle are spearheading a drive to thank the 98-year-old entertainer who has lifted the spirits of hundreds of thousands of American servicemen and women over the last 60 years.

“We were in an atmosphere of killing and surviving,” says Jack Yusen, 75, a Bellevue, Wash., resident and president of the Bob Hope Military Tribute. “Hope brought a little bit of home to us, and he continued to give of himself to the troops. It’s amazing what he’s done,” says Yusen, who spent 55 hours in shark-infested ocean waters after his destroyer was also sunk at Leyte Gulf.

The veterans’ $10-million thank-you project is planned as a circular-shaped monument in a grove of coral trees on the downtown San Diego waterfront and will feature five life-size bronze statues of Hope entertaining troops in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, in Europe during the Cold War era and in the Persian Gulf. A bronze globe, set above a water fountain, will unite the circle of statues, which will be equipped with motion-activated recordings of Hope delivering jokes.

Another five bronze statues will be positioned around the perimeter and will represent servicemen from the five branches of the armed forces. Behind each serviceman will be a large bas-relief panel portraying troops enjoying Hope’s humor.

The Port of San Diego, the government agency that manages San Diego harbor, has donated three-fifths of an acre valued at $4.9 million to accommodate the coastline site and has green-lighted the project. The artists are also lined up: Tom Askman and Lea Anne Lake of Spokane, Wash., who won accolades for an outdoor plaza sculpture in Iowa City, Iowa. But a water sculpture Askman built in Laguna Beach in the early ‘90s was a bit more controversial.

The veterans behind the project, who go by the name Taffy III--a reference to their task force group in World War II--also have an anonymous donor who will contribute up to $2.5 million in matching funds toward the monument. Thus, the nonprofit group needs to raise $2.5 million to realize the project, something they are hoping to do within 18 months. Since beginning fund-raising efforts this spring, the group says it has collected about $100,000.

The project might end up being neighbors with another attraction meant to memorialize the World War II generation. A current proposal calls for the retired aircraft carrier Midway to become a floating museum to honor naval aviation; it would also be on the downtown waterfront.

“We’re trying to accomplish all this while Bob is still with us,” says Ibe. “We’re really trying to reach out to the veterans, the people that saw Bob Hope, to contribute whatever they can--$1, $5, whatever.”

Hope’s recent bout with pneumonia, which put him in a Burbank hospital late last month, has added a sense of urgency to the project, the group says. The performer was released from the hospital last Thursday morning.

The Hope military tribute boasts an impressive list of backers that includes Honorary Chairman Gerald Ford, the Rev. Billy Graham, Sen. Daniel Inouye (D.-Hawaii), Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura and Sen. John McCain (R.-Ariz.), among others. Secretary of State Colin Powell was originally on the organization’s board but resigned when he joined the Bush administration.

The project’s Web site (at https://www.hopetribute.com) contains a guest book filled with veterans’ grateful memories of Hope. One is from Regan R. Wright, a retired Marine colonel who attended a show while serving in Vietnam 30 years ago.

“Bob Hope had us laughing so hard we forgot all about the war that day and we talked about it for weeks,” says Wright, who is now executive director of the USO in San Diego. “He really knew how to bring a touch of home to the troops and how to raise your morale.”

Another serviceman recalled a 1983 Christmas performance while serving aboard a ship off the coast of Beirut. Hope autographed the serviceman’s show program.

“Mr. Hope is one of the greatest morale boosters the military fighting man and woman has ever had,” the servicemen posted on the Web site. “God bless Bob Hope.”

The idea for the monument grew out of an earlier project undertaken by the same group of four veterans whose ranks also include a lawyer from Minneapolis and a retired bank president from St. Louis. The veterans successfully dedicated a memorial in San Diego to the 13 ships and 7,300 men in their task force that fought in the Battle of Leyte Gulf on Oct. 25, 1944. With that success, the city seemed like the logical choice for the Hope Tribute sculpture as well.