SUNDAY STORY:Tap-dancing into history

The plane plummeted toward the Camden Haven River, Bob Hope told jokes and Patty Thomas, dance shoes tied around her neck, prayed the rosary.

It was August 1944, and Thomas was on her way to the land Down Under for a little R&R; after a month of touring the South Pacific with Hope’s USO troupe.

She was writing a letter to her mother when she noticed the left propeller stutter as the treetops and mountains grew dangerously close.

The crew members jettisoned anything they could — suitcases, emergency medical supplies, tools — but not Thomas’ precious tap shoes.

“I could tell Mr. Hope was a little worried, but he told jokes to make us feel better,” said Thomas, now 85 and living in Newport Beach.

“I was worried about my costume. They didn’t have tap shoes over there, and I didn’t want to have to break in a new pair.”

Next to meeting the pope, it’s the most memorable moment of Thomas’ life, and it’s what brought Mitch McKay all the way from Port Macquarie, Australia, to Newport Beach this week.

Several years ago at the local airport, McKay noticed a series of banners depicting key moments in the area’s aviation history.

As the heritage officer for the Port Macquarie Hastings Council, he focused in on one: the amazing story of Hope and company’s crash landing and the impromptu performance that followed.

“This is a story that’s widely known to probably 300,000 people on the eastern coast of Australia,” McKay said.

Thomas remembers the small coastal town where she enjoyed her first shower in weeks, expressing her gratitude by dancing for many of the community’s 500 residents, some of whom had never heard of Hope.

“We had been washing using an army helmet,” she said. “That was a pure joy washing our hair and taking a shower.”

Just months before, Thomas was living comfortably in Beverly Hills, dancing in various USO shows throughout Southern California.

After seeing her perform, Hope asked a 21-year-old Thomas if she would like to join his overseas tour.

“I said, ‘Yeah! Is the pope Catholic?’ ” Thomas exclaimed. “At that time, you wanted to do everything you could for our boys, and dancing was what I could do to make them happy.”

A couple weeks later, Thomas was off to the South Pacific with Hope, who she called ‘Dad,’ fellow comedian Jerry Colonna, guitarist Tony Romano, Frances Langford — the well-known singer who was to become her best friend — and Hope’s writer, Barney Dean.

“I was so excited that I was going with Bob Hope,” Thomas said. “Back then, he was number one, and I got to be a part of that show, and that was the greatest thrill in the world.”

The group performed five or six shows a day for weeks at a time during World War II, hopping from one island to the next. If it was raining, Thomas danced atop a plank in the mud. If there was no stage, she tapped on the hood of a jeep.

Their audience ranged from a couple hundred to a few thousand. Thomas celebrated her 22nd birthday on the island of Pavuvu dancing for a crowd of 3,000 soldiers who interrupted the show to sing “Happy Birthday.”

One time, the entertainers were so close to the front lines that Japanese snipers were shooting from the trees above them, but Thomas doesn’t remember being scared. She remembers only the joy of performing.

“That was the best audience that you could ever, ever want because they were so needful and appreciative,” Thomas said. “Bob Hope told me that after one show, 40% of them took their guns and their ammunition, went out and didn’t come back. That makes you grow up.”

Thomas’ favorite stage was the hospital floor, where she and Langford would dance up and down the aisle for injured soldiers. She also sat and talked with the “ones who were not going to make it.”

“They used to tell me that I reminded them of their girlfriends or their wives or whatever,” she said. “It was a tremendous honor. I was just so flattered.”

Thomas continued to tour with Hope for 20 years. She always kept a suitcase packed, anticipating the famed entertainer’s 11th-hour phone calls.

“One time he called and asked me to go with him to Alaska,” she said. “I asked him when we were leaving and he said, ’20 minutes,’ and, you know, I made it.”

After moving to Newport Beach in the late ‘70s to be with her niece, Rebecca Welch, Thomas spent much of her time teaching musical theater at local elementary schools and tap dancing at Irvine Valley College.

A few years later, Langford’s husband, Outboard Marine Corp. owner Ralph Evinrude, fell ill and Thomas went to Florida to help out.

She ended up staying 20 years, long after Evinrude died, returning only after her best friend passed away in 2005.

Thomas, the last surviving member of the original troupe, is no longer able to dance. Instead, she focuses her creativity on painting, sometimes portraits of her celebrity friends, which included Ella Fitzgerald, Bing Crosby and Judy Garland.

Despite reliance on a cane, she moves gracefully as ever about her Newport Beach home.

Thomas’ tap shoes don’t hang from her bedroom wall — one pair is safely tucked away in storage, another is on display at the Smithsonian — but a white statue of the Virgin Mary prays next to a figure of Hope at his microphone.

She sleeps next to the sacred symbols each night. And dreams of dancing.

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