Happy Birthday, Bob!
The Coachella Valley today celebrates the 100th birthday of the man who brought its desert oasis image to the world.

Bob Hope, whose nationally televised Bob Hope Chrysler Classic golf tournament sends images of the sunny Coachella Valley to snow-covered regions around the United States, will celebrate with a traditional cake surrounded by his wife and family at his primary home in Toluca Lake.

Other parts of the world will celebrate with a little more hoopla.

Bob Hope Enterprises officials say more than 35 states have recognized Hope’s birthday, including California. President George W. Bush has sent Hope a congratulatory letter, as has England’s Queen Elizabeth. Both the U.S. Senate and the English Parliament have saluted Hope, who was born in England.

More cities are celebrating his centennial, including towns throughout the Coachella Valley where he lived, played golf and helped launch such nonprofit facilities as Eisenhower Medical Center and the McCallum Theatre in the Bob Hope Cultural Center.

Hope has long reigned as honorary mayor of Palm Springs, where his airport terminal-like home atop a hill in the Southridge district of the city has been the subject of picture postcards popular with tourists.

As of Tuesday, Hope had received more than 2,000 birthday cards and 5,000 e-mails. Many more are expected.

His wife, Dolores, 94, said Hope is doing well for being 100. Friends say he’s not active inside his house, but he’s alert.

Dolores Hope called this 100th birthday something "we always prayed for."

"His grandfather almost reached that age," she said by telephone from Toluca Lake last week. "He died three weeks before 100. Of course, we have to catch up with George Burns and Irving Berlin. They both made it."

She reflected on her lifetime of laughs and service as the centennial approached and tried to put it in perspective.

"We hope that we’re using the years well," she said. "I think you get them for some reason, and that’s it. God’s will be done."

Former President Gerald R. Ford of Rancho Mirage, who will turn 90 in July, called Hope "a super, super patriot."

Ford said he hadn’t seen his longtime golfing buddy in five months, but he delighted in recalling how they met in 1938 in New Haven, Conn., after a performance of Hope’s Broadway musical, "Red, Hot and Blue."

When the United States celebrated its bicentennial in 1976, Ford was president and Hope was his master of ceremonies. He called Hope’s performance "outstanding."