Cover Story: For Emma Lampert, 'Miss USO 2001,' Singing for the Troops Has Been a Blast

Emma Lampert never knew that one of her "absolutely favorite aunts," Frances Conti, had been a performer. "She was very funny," Emma remembers. "She had a Lucille Ball-ish personality. She was always singing and tap dancing. When she died, she was even buried in her red tap shoes."

A year ago, Emma, who is possessed of an infectious vivacity, read in one of the actor’s trade papers about the annual quest to find and crown "Miss USO." She was intrigued. "It just seemed right," she says. So she became one of a hundred young women to enter the talent contest.

She won. It was then that her family told her all about Aunt Fran, how she had entertained with the USO back in ‘45, the last year of the fighting in the Second World War.

Now, as Emma is about to end her tenure as "Miss USO, 2001" for the USO of Metropolitan New York, her usual ebullience turns wistful. "I never spoke with Aunt Fran about the USO. Now I wish I had. Oh, I wish I had."

Singing and Good Vibes

Throughout this difficult and turbulent year, Emma Lampert and her hardy troupe of singers have been ambassadors of good will for the USO. They have performed at 150 or so different venues, at VA hospitals and nursing homes, at military installations, during parades, at the DMZ in Korea, aboard the USS Juneau in Sassebo, Japan.

"We started the year off doing 23 VA hospitals in ten days," Emma says during a telephone interview from the USO offices in New York City, where the United Services Organization was founded 60 years ago at the behest of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. A voluntary, non-profit organization, the mission of the USO, which has 122 chapters around the world, is "to serve the human needs of military personnel and their families."

And veterans, too.

"We’d go into a hospital and get up close and personal with the vets there," Emma says. "We put our arms around them and sing songs from the different eras represented in our audience. This way, we feel so much more connected. And to see the look on their faces, to see their tears of joy, has been just a wonderful experience.

"We never just leave an event," Emma explains. "We hang out and talk to the vets or the active-duty military personnel and listen to their stories - about the girl they’d left behind, or the baby born while they were stationed overseas.

"There was one performance that stands out," she says. "We were performing for patients in a psychiatric ward at a VA medical center. I was singing ‘More Than a Name on the Wall,’ a Statler Brothers tune, and one of the Vietnam vets just walks up to the stage and hands me his ‘gang beads,’ a souvenir from his time in Southeast Asia. I was just so moved; I carry them with me all the time now."

Faces of War and Tragedy

For the ebullient Emma, a Jersey girl who grew up in Park Ridge, and now lives in Weehawken, "war now has a personal face."

So does Ground Zero.

Four days after the terrorist attack leveled the Twin Towers, Emma trouped down - actually, she went by boat - to the site of the tragedy to cheer up the rescue workers - the firefighters, the police officers, the emergency medical teams, the National Guardsmen. One rescuer - she remembers him as Jojo - had lost a brother and a cousin. "Come sit with me, Emma," he said. "Come sing to me."

She stayed, and she sang, for 17 hours.

Then other performers started coming down to Ground Zero. And the USO linked up with the William Morris talent agency to arrange for celebrity entertainers to help life the spirits of the rescue workers, explains Victoria Reed, USO entertainment director. John Travolta, Christie Brinkley, Brooke Shields, Ben Stiller, Lee Greenwood, Olivia Newton-John, and Nathan Lane followed in Emma’s footsteps.

As "Miss USO," Emma Lampert has grown as a performer. "It’s an incredible experience in being spontaneous," she says, being able to rehearse a song once or twice and then go with it. And being able to ebb and flow with your audience.

Her experiences, though, have also changed her.

"When I was 18, I wanted to star on Broadway by the time I was 30," she reflects. "Now, while I’ll continue auditioning for parts on Broadway and in regional theater, and while I’d like to do my own cabaret next year, I also want to continue to help make a real, direct difference with my talents by bringing the healing power of music those who really appreciate it."

In the spirit of the holiday season, it’s better to give than to receive. In addition, Emma Lampert has received more than she anticipated when she auditioned to be "Miss USO."

Her Aunt Fran would be proud.