Mention the USO, and newsreel images of World War II servicemen dancing with hostesses to Big Band music comes to mind. Or maybe it’s the Bob Hope TV specials, showing him bringing jokes and Hollywood starlets in USO shows that traveled to Vietnam.

Today the United Service Organization is still providing American service members and their spouses with support services designed to boost service members’ morale and keep military families connected.

In the 21st century, USO-sponsored Super Bowl watch parties and video gaming zones may have replaced railroad canteens and volunteer hostesses, but the mission of the USO continues unchanged.

According to USO historian Danielle DeSimone, a few months before the United States entered World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was already creating a support system for the nation’s armed forces.

Brought together were the Salvation Army, the YMCA, the YWCA, the National Catholic Community Service, the National Travelers Aid Association and the National Jewish Welfare Board. These six organizations formed the United Service Organizations on Feb. 4, 1941, to provide morale and recreation services to the troops.

Then, in December that year, Pearl Harbor was attacked, and the United States was at war. DeSimone wrote that as America’s service members quickly pivoted and prepared themselves to enter the war’s front lines, the USO pivoted along with them.

As hundreds of thousands of troops began to mobilize overseas to the Europe and Pacific theaters, the USO created a network of centers and lounges across the United States for the troops’ recreational use. Churches, stores, museums and even barns and railroad cars were quickly transformed into welcoming spaces for service members.

DeSimone wrote that although the federal government built or leased the buildings in which these centers were housed at the time, the services provided by the USO were — and continue to be — funded and staffed by charitable donations and volunteers. At each of the more than 3,000 USO centers that were in existence at the peak of the USO’s World War II operations, service members could always turn to the organization for a place to relax with their fellow servicemen, tuck into a home-cooked meal or receive a welcoming smile from a USO hostess.

According to DeSimone, these centers became pivotal social spaces for troops. At both these centers and military bases, the USO provided service members with stellar entertainment throughout the war, with a variety of performances from Bob Hope to Dinah Shore to Laurel and Hardy.

USO centers also served coffee and snacks, as well as offered stationery for service members to use to write letters back home, bunks to take naps, services to mend uniforms and the latest phonograph records.

For the wives following their soldier spouse from camp to camp within the U.S., the USO created programs and services for them. Aside from entertainment events geared specifically to the spouses of servicemen, the USO also provided them with resources for financial budgeting, child care, education and social events to meet other spouses.

For service members without families or those far from loved ones, USO centers throughout the U.S. and U.S. territories offered other recreational activities such as the beloved USO dances, where young USO hostesses dressed in their best attire would provide service members with a wholesome morale boost by dancing, chatting and socializing with attending service members, according to DeSimone.

Meanwhile, in the Europe and Pacific theaters, the mission of delivering a piece of home to military members was even more crucial. In the approximately six years that the U.S. was involved in World War II, more than 16 million Americans left their homes to serve.

For two years after the end of World War II, the USO’s future seemed uncertain. The organization was “honorably discharged” by President Harry Truman, and to the history books, it appeared that the USO closed its doors and was inactive for several years, DeSimone wrote. However, USO records show that government officials were concerned about what the disappearance of the USO would mean to the welfare of the hundreds of thousands of service members returning home during peacetime, and instead kept some basic operations in motion.

In the five years between World War II and the Korean War, the USO continued to welcome service members at centers and lounges both in the U.S. and abroad. USO entertainment shows visited the many wounded soldiers recuperating in military hospitals after the war.

In 1950, the Korean War broke out. Just one year before, Truman reactivated the USO in anticipation of needed support for these troops and in the following years, the statement that at the USO, “we go where they go” became even more poignant, as the doors opened to the first USO centers in combat zones.

In the United States, the USO continued to be a home away from home for the hundreds of thousands of service members who were deployed or reassigned to new duty stations. Unfamiliar with their new city, town or base, these service members knew that they could always turn to the USO for entertainment, activities or even just a place to relax. These centers also offered services to the spouses of these service members, such as child care at the USO center or social events.

Throughout the Korean War, the USO continued to provide the entertainment and support the organization had become famous for during World War II. However, it was a few years later, during the Vietnam War, that the USO’s services became even more crucial.

According to a March 6, 1963, article in the Nashville Tennessean, the USO arrived in Vietnam even before the first American troops, opening a center in Saigon that year. Thousands of service members would arrive in Vietnam two years later, after the Marines made landfall in Da Nang, and would eventually step through the doors of USO.

At the peak of the war, the USO had 17 centers in Vietnam and six in Thailand. Many of these were staffed by civilian female volunteers who had left home themselves to provide a morale boost to troops serving under high-stress conditions. These USO centers became save havens throughout the war. Because so many civilian communities throughout Vietnam were at risk of attack, service members often had almost nowhere to go in their free time away from the front lines — that is, no place other than the USO.

Here, they could call home, take a hot shower and get something to eat — either a snack, a signature USO hot dog, or even a full-fledged, home-cooked holiday meal. If they were lucky, maybe they could even see a USO show.

In a war still remembered for its brutality, these USO shows served as much-needed moments of levity for deployed service members. To have stars like Sammy Davis Jr. and Ann-Margret travel to the Iron Triangle or the deck of an aircraft carrier in the South China Sea to perform for them, service members were given — for just a moment — a small piece of home and a “thank you” for their immense sacrifice.

And after 1964, holidays on the front lines would never be the same. It was this year that Bob Hope brought his first Bob Hope USO Christmas Show to Vietnam with a star-studded cast ready to entertain service. The show would become a yearly tradition and it continued until 1990, according to DeSimone.

For Dave Smith of Connoquenessing, the memories of the Hope’s USO shows remain fresh 57 years later.

Smith was a Marine serving the first of two tours in Vietnam in 1966.

“The first was in 1966; I was stationed in Chu Lai, south of Da Nang,” said Smith, referring to a Bob Hope USO show. “It was great. Now keep in mind I was a young man at the time, and it was great to see American women. I know it sounds terrible.”

Smith remembered that Raquel Welch was on that tour.

Smith said he saw a second USO tour in 1967 or 1968.

“I got to see Ann Margaret and Jayne Mansfield,” Smith said. “I got to go and unwind. You never knew where you were going to find yourself.”

“The USO was good for us,” Smith said. “There was a lot of stress. You never knew what you were going to face.

“I would wake up every morning and think to myself ‘This is good day to die.’”

This was especially true during his second tour in Vietnam when Smith said he was a “grunt.”

“You didn’t know if you would be in ambush, a foot trap, or a land mine,” he said.

The uncertainty of war was driven home for Smith when he was wounded twice in 1968, once by a mortar attack and a second time when one of the South Vietnamese soldiers he was training tried to kill him.

Smith recovered from his wounds and went on to serve 34 years in the Marine Corps. Today he is a member of American Legion Post 778 in Butler.

“It was a good organization. They were a friendly face. They gave you a place to talk to other people,” said Smith of the USO.

Bill Weber, of Butler, who spent 29 years in the Navy and then the Coast Guard as a chief petty officer, remembers visiting USO centers during his time in the service.

“When you are away from home and you don’t know anybody, you could go to the USO,” Weber said. “They would have dances where you could meet girls and dance with them and talk with them and maybe go out with them.

“They would have cigarettes and coffee and doughnuts. They would have special events, a show or a singalong that kept you entertained and kept you happy when you were homesick,” Weber said. “It was especially important when you were overseas. There was one in Italy that I really liked.”

“You could get really lonely. There were just guys aboard the ship. They were military people,” he said. “At the USO, they were civilians. You were meeting people. You could talk about their homes.”

As the world moved into the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, the United States engaged in a series of conflicts and peacekeeping missions. Most notable of these, which the USO provided support for, were the Gulf War, Operation Joint Endeavour and Operation Restore Hope.

Sherry Rossman, a resident of Robin’s House, which provides housing for women veterans and their children in Butler, remembers the USO aiding her during an especially difficult time during her five years in the Coast Guard as a petty officer third class.

“In 1991, I was eight months pregnant and at Coast Guard Station Boston. I found out my best friend had died in a motorcycle accident. This was when there were no cellphones. My stepmother called to tell me,” Rossman said. The funeral was in Bellefonte in Centre County, Rossman’s hometown.

It was an exceptionally heavy blow, said Rossman because her friend, Wendy Rupert, “was actually going to be my nanny when I had my baby, but she didn’t make it.”

“My XO (executive officer) came in and asked what was wrong and I explained that my best friend had passed away,” she said.

Rossman said her XO got in contact with the USO and explained her situation.

“The USO bought me an airline ticket to and from Boston to Pennsylvania and got me $200 in spending money,” Rossman said. “They were a very good outfit. The USO really helped me out.”

Rossman said she was surprised that the USO still existed.

Not only does the USO still exist, said David Carrier, the public relations manager for the USO, it has adapted its ways to reach out to service members as technology as evolved.

Today, said Carrier, “There are more than 250 USO Centers in 28 countries that provide a home away from home for service members and their families. Centers are located on military installations, in airports, on Navy ships, and within communities.”

The USO has more than 700 employees and more than 18,000 volunteers.

In 2022, the USO delivered 27 in-person tours and 34 Military Virtual Programming livestreamed sessions to over 40,000 service members and military families across 30 countries and 427 military sites around the world.

Carrier said, in addition to the tours and centers, the USO provides a range of specialized programs to support the well-being of all service members and their families. The USO has programs for military spouses and youth, a canine program, a reading program where family members can send recordings of them reading stories while separated, transitions programming for service members and their family members looking for career support and more.

Through USO Gaming, service members can forge bonds with fellow service members, stay connected to loved ones back home and take time to recharge through the simple act of playing a video game. Research shows that gaming can help service members in everything from improving teamwork to battling mental illness, making this program crucial to the wellness and morale of our nation’s military.

USO Gaming Centers are outfitted with top-of-the-line screens and consoles, designed specifically so that groups of service members can play games — and bond — together. Meanwhile, USO Gaming Tournaments allow service members to build relationships with other gamers, keep in touch with friends and family, or even just remain connected to life beyond the military, all of which helps ease the isolation that many service members face on deployment or at remote duty stations.

Carrier said the USO offers several programs for military families:

As ever, the USO remains a nonprofit organization chartered by Congress with no connection to the Department of Defense that relies on donations from individuals, organizations and corporations to support its programs.