As a young soldier in drafting school in 1953 at Fort Belvoir, Va., Bill Lieb, now 92, heard that Bob Hope was coming to perform.

“He was coming to the post’s theater,” Lieb said. “The only ones invited were officers, so I had no hopes of going to see him.”

On the night of the performance, Lieb asked some of his bunkmates if they wanted to take a walk for something to do.

None were interested, so he embarked on his stroll alone. Fort Belvoir is 20 miles outside Washington, D.C.

No one was around on the July evening, so he walked up to the post theater about two blocks away.

“The door opens and this guy steps out, and he said ‘Hey soldier, come here, come here,’” Lieb recalled. “I got about 6 feet away and noticed it was Bob Hope. I said ‘Hey, you’re Bob Hope!’”

The entertainer, who was known for his dedication for performing for members of the military over his long career, was feverishly patting the pockets in his pants and suit jacket.

“He said ‘When I do a show, I always have gum in my mouth, and I don’t have any gum. I can’t do a show without gum,’” Lieb said.

Lieb happened to have a single stick of gum and offered it to the celebrity, who was about to go onstage at the theater.

“He said ‘Thanks there, soldier’ and we talked for a few minutes,” he said.

A man soon came out and said the show was about to start, so Lieb prepared to resume his walk around the base.

“(Hope) said ‘Follow me’ and we went inside,” Lieb said. “He said to a guy there ‘This is a friend of mine. Let him watch the show from the wings.’ So I stood and watched the whole show.”

He did not recall Hope putting on any airs due to his Hollywood status as a legendary comedian, actor and singer.

“He was a real friendly guy,” Lieb said. “That was my experience with him.”

Hope wasn’t the only top celebrity Lieb happened upon, as he encountered Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis smoking during a break in their performance at the former Stanley Theater in Pittsburgh. Lieb was 16 or 17 at the time.

“I didn’t know who they were,” he said. “In the late ’40s, they were just getting started.”

A week or so after meeting Hope, Lieb finished his Army draftsman classes, which officers recommended for him because he had been studying drafting before being conscripted for service during the Korean War.

Instead of boarding a ship for the war zone, Lieb was told he would be assigned to a facility in Long Island City, N.Y.

“I said ‘Where is that?’ I had never heard of it,” he said.

Lieb soon learned that the Signal Corps Photographic Center (SCPC) was in the borough of Queens, across the river from Manhattan in huge soundstages the Army bought from Paramount just before the start of World War II.

Paramount filmed many movies there in the 1920s.

During its heyday as the SCPC, later the Army Pictorial Center, countless Army training films were produced there.

The “soldiers” who appeared in the films peeling potatoes or driving a tank actually were actors from New York City, Lieb said.

He said a corporal assigned to the SCPC had been employed by the NBC affiliate in Kansas City as a civilian, so he was chosen to get the Army into the new medium known as television.

“The general in charge knew nothing about television,” Lieb said. “A corporal was running the division.”

Lieb worked to provide drawings for stages, electrical systems and other construction at the SCPC.

“I held the sound boom sometimes, too,” he said. “By the time I was discharged, they had a pretty good operation.”

Lieb spent two years in the Army, and on Jan. 15, marked the 70th anniversary of being drafted.

During his time at the SCPC, Lieb and his fellow soldiers frequently accessed the Big Apple via the subway station one block away.

A favorite destination was the U.S.O. booth in Times Square, where free tickets to first-run movies, Broadway shows, and professional baseball and football games were available to military personnel.

“I saw many a Jackie Gleason show,” Lieb said.

One bit of fun Lieb had was viewing a taping of the game show “A Dollar A Second,” which was hosted by Jan Murray.

“It was a popular show on Sunday nights in the ’50s,” he said.

While in the audience, he filled out an application to appear on the show as a contestant, and producers called him at the SCPC a week later.

Lieb went in for an interview, and in the fall of 1953, found himself on stage with Murray while the cameras whirred.

The show was comprised of wacky tasks performed by contestants that earned them a dollar per second of success in that task.

While Lieb recalls that he performed more than one task on the show, the only one he remembers is blowing on a pingpong ball that was being propelled across a table by a fan.

Lieb had to keep the ball on the table this way for as long as possible.

“I ended up keeping it on the table for 535 seconds,” he said, chuckling at the ridiculous, yet profitable, memory. “The next spring, I bought a new Chevy, right on Broadway.”

Lieb was discharged from the Army in January 1955, and he married Emma, a girl he had met while visiting his hometown of Bellevue on leave. Lieb bought 62 acres outside Zelienople, and he designed electrical systems for an engineering company that contracted with local steel mills.

Now, his wife is deceased. His daughter lives in Butler and his son lives in Myrtle Beach, S.C.

Lieb is pleased when he looks back on his life and his chance encounter with Bob Hope so many years ago.

“I was lucky,” he said. “I guess I’ve been lucky my whole life.”