Hope Memorial Bridge honors Bob Hope and his stonemason father

CLEVELAND, Ohio (WOIO) - “Bob Hope was the champion of comedy for about fifty years, starting in vaudeville, then into radio, big star again, teevee, huge, movies,” said Tom Kelly, Cleveland historian and author of “The Cleveland 200.”

Born Leslie Townes Hope in England in 1903, Hope’s family emigrated to the United States when Bob was five, settling in Cleveland, where Bob’s father found work as a stonemason, working on a bridge that would eventually bear the family’s name.

The young Hope eventually changed his first name to Bob and sang and danced in the streets of Cleveland and even boxed under the name Packy East. But like his mother, a light opera singer, he eventually chose show business.

“He picked up a lady partner and did some vaudeville, and he became a star all the way back in vaudeville,” said Kelly.

“He just stood, and he had a quick little one-liner or two-liner and then on to the next bit,” said Kelly. “But it sure worked for him, and it worked for America.”

Famous for his USO tours where he entertained U.S. troops overseas, Hope never forgot Cleveland, buying a small stake in the Cleveland Indians in 1946, a stake he held for most of his life. He returned to Cleveland for the Indians’ last game at Cleveland Municipal Stadium in 1993, where he sang his signature song with custom lyrics, “Thanks For the Memories.” He also participated in Cleveland’s bicentennial celebration in 1996.

“He was always fond of Cleveland, good to Cleveland,” said Kelly.

Workers built the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge in the 1920s with its Guardians of Traffic, and, in 1983, it received its new name, the Hope Memorial Bridge, paying tribute to Bob Hope and the men like Hope’s father who built the bridge.

“His father was a stonemason, and Cleveland was booming,” Kelly said of the time the Hope family came to Cleveland. “Booming!”

Hope hosted the Academy Awards a record 19 times in a career that spanned eighty years. He died in 2003 at age 100 in California, retiring only a few years before, performing well into his nineties.

“I don’t think you can say in the twentieth century there was a comedian as big as Bob Hope,” Kelly concluded.