NOTE: Enjoy this excerpt from The American Daily Reader, by CatholicVote president Brian Burch and Emily Stimpson Chapman. To order the complete volume, visit the CatholicVote store today!
In 1908, William Henry Hope moved his wife and seven sons from England to Cleveland. He was looking for work. He found women and booze.
While the elder Hope drank, his fifth son, Leslie, put food on the table by singing and dancing on street corners. Eventually, the busking led to Vaudeville, Vaudeville led to Broadway, and Broadway led to Hollywood.
By the early 1940s, the one-time busker went by the name “Bob” and was one of Hollywood’s most bankable stars. He also was one of its most generous. Bob Hope gave his time to America’s soldiers—headlining 57 USO (United Service Organization) tours in his lifetime—and he gave his money to the Catholic Church.
For the first gift, the U.S. government rewarded the entertainer with the USNS Bob Hope, commissioned on September 2, 1993. For the second gift, Hope’s wife, Dolores, rewarded him with a smile. Hope, who was raised Presbyterian, married the devoutly Catholic Dolores in 1934 and throughout their marriage generously supported her Church.
That support included large-scale gifts to parish-building campaigns for parishes, hospitals, and religious orders. It also included more personal gifts, such as funding one priest’s outreach to the homeless in Los Angeles and letting local Catholic school children use his yard as a playground.
Hope likewise donated the funds to build Our Lady of Hope Chapel at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. Unfortunately, despite his generosity, what Hope couldn’t do for most of his 69-year marriage was share Dolores’ faith. A notorious philanderer, Hope seemed incapable of embracing the teachings of the Church for which he did so much. Dolores, however, never walked away. Rather, she endured years of humiliation by growing in her faith and praying for Hope to find his.
God answered those prayers in the last decade of the couple’s married life. Bob Hope spent his final years as a faithful Catholic convert, dying at the age of 100 in 2003.
