Dolores Hope R.I.P.

Dolores Hope, wife of Bob Hope, passed away yesterday at 102.

Dolores Hope, who throughout her 69-year marriage to comedian Bob Hope oversaw their charitable giving and played a key role in establishing the Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage, Calif., has died. She was 102.

Mrs. Hope died Sept. 19 at her home in the Toluca Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles, publicist Harlan Boll said. No cause of death was reported.

...In 2009, on her 100th birthday, she attended a party in the back yard of the Toluca Lake home that she and her husband bought in 1938. At the event, daughter Linda Hope theorized that laughter in the family home contributed to her parents’ long lives.

She was born Dolores DeFina on May 27, 1909, in New York, and grew up in the Bronx.

During the 1930s, she sang in nightclubs using the stage name of Dolores Reade and met Bob Hope when he caught a New York show. After a brief courtship, they married in 1934 and were soon sharing the vaudeville stage.

While Mrs. Hope raised their four adopted children, her husband’s career took off and he was often away.

“When we were celebrating our 50th anniversary, people would say, ‘Fifty years?’ And Bob would say, ‘Yeah, but I’ve only been home three weeks,’ ” Mrs. Hope told the Palm Springs Desert Sun in 1995.

To mark that half-century, she gave him a paperweight inscribed “Don’t think these three weeks haven’t been fun.”

Rest in Peace.