A Salute for Gypsy Rose Lee — Guest post by @jackdrsm

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Guest post by Jack Durish

THIS MEMORIAL DAY I got to thinking about the living rather than the dead. The difference between those killed in action and those wounded in action can be extremely slim. A simple matter of inches or seconds may be the difference. In the matter of suffering, the dead may even hold an advantage.

Thanks to Bob Hope and his highly publicized tours every Christmas, most everyone knows about celebrities visiting to entertain the troops. However, many may not know that some came just to visit, to hold a hand, to share a few kind words. They traveled the hospital circuit for the USO.

My first encounter with celebrities on the USO hospital circuit came when I was a patient at the hospital at Camp Bearcat, headquarters for the 9th Infantry Division in Vietnam. No, I wasn’t there for anything heroic. I was in the infectious disease ward with a dose of malaria when a contestant from the Miss America competition stopped by. She was escorted by a representative of the USO who carried a Polaroid camera. He took photos of the young lady posing with each patient. She autographed them as she encouraged us to get well soon.

After visiting with the patient in the bed next to mine, her entourage was detained as she stepped up to the next bed. The patient there had been a mystery to us. He hadn’t moved or uttered a sound since the medics deposited him there two days earlier. Looking like the patient from Catch 22, he was the terminus of IVs carrying fluids in and out. An icepack sat atop his testicles like the snow cap atop Mount Everest. “What’s your problem?” she asked with the same level of concern she had used with all of us.


Autographs for the troops
Everyone in the ward was watching and amazed when his hand found its way to the ice pack. Her escorts reacted too late. In the famous words of Marlene Dietrich, he was indeed glad to see her. She was ushered quickly from the ward. I have often thought of her and wondered if she ever recovered. It took a tough woman to tour those wards, a tough woman like Gypsy Rose Lee.

Gypsy stopped at Tripler Army Medical Center in Hawaii where I had been assigned after my tour of duty ended in Vietnam. As special services officer, one of my duties was to escort visiting celebrities. I shared this duty with two nice little old ladies from the Red Cross who loved to chat with celebrities. At the end of the day, when I returned Gypsy to her hotel on Waikiki Beach, she invited me up for a drink. She wanted to talk to me.

She was disappointed that she had met so few of the patients. Tripler was a fifteen hundred-bed hospital. She asked if I would help her rebook her flight home and let her revisit the hospital the next day without the Red Cross ladies. Of course I consented.

I stopped at a lei shop and bought the most expensive carnation lei I could find before I picked her up the next morning. After breakfast, we went to the hospital and rode the elevator to the top floor. She was determined to visit every floor in every wing before the day ended. I don’t think she understood just what a daunting task that was but I wasn’t about to stand in her way.


An autographed photo
that made it home
A group of patients were loitering in the elevator lobby when we arrived and she went immediately to one and began to chat. I took the opportunity to sneak over to another in a wheel chair. “How would you like to lei Gypsy Rose Lee?” I asked without realizing she had followed close behind me.

The young man broke out in a broad smile and said, “Yeah, give me a minute to put my legs on!”

I hadn’t noticed that he was a double amputee. A blanket lying across his lap covered the stumps.

Gypsy stepped around me and plopped into his lap. She hugged and kissed him and said, “You just sit right there, son.”

I handed him the lei and he performed the duty with great gusto.

I loved watching Gypsy work the wards. She would jump into bed with a startled patient and lean close to whisper, “Now you can say you were in bed with Gypsy Rose Lee.”

Those kids wouldn’t know her from Adam, but they knew the name. Everyone of them broke out smiling and adored the attention.

Gypsy carried a package of fortune cookies that she shared with the men. Each contained a bawdy limerick or joke.

I brought one of my men along to snap Polaroid pictures that I’m sure each patient treasured.

I was fortunate to share dinner with Gypsy after a long day and we talked into the night. She autographed a “cheesecake” photo for me, one taken during her glory days (she had great gams). I treasured it until it was lost in the breakup of my first marriage.

Thus, this Memorial Day reminded me of many reasons to mourn. But, it also reminded me of so many things that I have to be thankful for. The country that those who fought and died left for us. And, it reminded me of that day I had in the company of a great lady. She wasn’t just a celebrity. She was an entertainer, one whose spirit transcended the generations that day.


Find Jack online... & his book

"Rebels On the Mountain"