At a White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in May 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower clapped vigorously after Bob Hope, recalling their 1943 meeting in Algiers, remarked, “That was when he was a four-star general and had some power.” Pictured here, Eisenhower presents Hope with the Army’s highest civilian decoration, the Medal of Merit, in appreciation of Hope’s wartime contributions to national morale. In this letter, Eisenhower, Hope’s hero, expressed a sentimental attachment to the comedian’s name.