Ticket sales went well beyond 200 for the USO Show re-enactment held at the Military Museum on Saturday afternoon May 19.  With performances by Gary Ferris as a World War II radio star modeled after Bob Hope, the Manhattan Dolls trio and the Saratoga Savoy Swing Dancers,  young and old were treated to an extraordinary program.  Organized as a fundraiser, the show was a recreation of a live-audience radio program as was commonly heard over Armed Forces Radio in the 1940s.

The entire event ran for three hours and included refreshments similar to those  served at a war time cantina.  Nearly all who came stayed to the finish.  The audience included World War II, Korea and Vietnam vets and their families, as well as current generation vets and others joined in the extravaganza.  Exhibition Hall was turned in to an auditorium with seats ringing a stage for the live radio broadcast and the band supporting the Manhattan Dolls.  Area reenactors turned out in uniform and mixed in with the crowd.  Additional period displays of posters, photos and artifacts were added on tables set up near the Museum’s standing exhibits.

“There could have been no better reward for us and the Museum, than to see those elderly warriors stand proud when the National Anthem was sung,” said “Friends” president Lance Ingmire.   “Watching them tap their feet to the music and seeing them get misty eyed when the girls ran through their military songs — It was moving and truly an honor to have given something back to them,” he said. “I feel in my heart they enjoyed the performance.”


Sarah Drake, one of the performers for The Manhattan Dolls, also recalls the wonderful experience her trio had at the show. She writes on their official blog “I feel so honored that we could be a part of that fundraiser and we hope to return another time.”

This is another successful fund raising effort by “Friends” and follows the sell-out joint effort with the Saratoga Springs Lions Club back on March 31 dubbed “Brewseum.”  This effort is one of many programs the Friends of the New York State Military Museums puts on during the year to support New York military history and education. Such efforts are essential to not only preserve the Museum and its present exhibits but to improve and add new ones in the near future.

Check it out at www.friendsofthenysmilitarymuseum.com