Where There's Wife, There's Hope

Friday January 08, 1999 12:00 AM EST

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Dolores Reade Hope, philanthropist and wife of comedian Bob Hope, was honored by Our Lady of Mercy Medical Center with the Terence Cardinal Cooke Humanitarian Award at New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel Thursday night. "I'm so glad Bob could be here," said Mrs. Hope, 90, of her 96-year-old husband, who sat quietly at the head table while his wife took to the stage and proved that she could deliver a punchline, too. "He usually tells some great jokes," Dolores said of Bob. "He's not telling jokes these days. There's one he tells about going with me to Catholic charities -- he'd drive up, and they'd raffle off his car."

• The gala evening benefited the Roy Rogers & Dale Evans Children's Center at Our Lady in the Bronx and Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Dublin, Ireland. Making an extremely rare public appearance at the Waldorf was Dale Evans herself, confined to a wheelchair (the victim of a recent stroke) but still looking radiant and sounding exactly like the adventurous cowgirl who rode alongside Roy Rogers, the King of the Cowboys. "He never got over being a young guy from Ohio," a tearful Evans (who turns 87 this Halloween) told the crowd about her late husband. "What you saw was what you got. I miss him."