Last night, friends and I were gathered in the kitchen, cooking yet another smashing dinner. Wine was flowing and conversations bouncing back and forth when I brought up a story that had touched me during the final few weeks of OTH. They insisted that I write it out to share with SoGoPro… so here it is:

I was working on reconciling the office asset list in the bullpen (aka the Production Office) when I half heard one of my staff on a call trying to explain that our show was just about to wrap shooting for good and that it would be difficult to help them out with a visit request, she was super nice about it but firm. Of course, over nine seasons we have gotten hundreds (maybe thousands) of these types of requests for set visits and it's just not possible to accommodate all. Thru the din of office noise I heard her mention the Marines as she tried to wrap up the call - my ears perked up and I waved at my assistant to put the caller on hold and asked her what the caller needed. While she was explaining, something clicked as she mentioned Camp Lejeune (a Marine Base near Wilmington.) I quickly asked her was the caller a Marine who had helped with the concert we had held during Season Six... She nodded yes.

A Bit of Background

Most of you know that Hilarie is fiercely loyal to those who serve in our Armed forces. What most of you don't know is that my father also served our country for 28 years including fighting in both Korea and Vietnam... he was a career jarhead, leatherneck or as they are officially known - a United States Marine. One of the many amazing talents H.B. possesses is her ability to walk into a room or function not know a soul and within minutes everybody is listening to her. She makes everyone feel at ease immediately and if she’s fired up about a subject, before you know it everyone within ear-shot is along with her. Keep these in mind as we... Flashback: September 2008 – Ep.6.10 I trust many of you have seen the episode: “Peyton” produced a USO concert featuring “Angels & Airwaves”, Kate Voegele as “Mia”, and “Haley” with Enation 

“ONE TREE HILL” AND THE USO TEAM UP TO OFFER MARINES AND VIEWERS A UNIQUE CONCERT EXPERIENCE, “USOTH,” ON SEPTEMBER 19 IN JACKSONVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA 

I’ll leave out the boring logistical details leading up to getting a film/concert crew onto a military base… to share the most memorable parts of an amazing day/night. On the day of the concert, several of us had been invited by the Marines to visit a few interesting places on the base – the pilot training room and various other training simulators - along with watching the flight line preparing for a training mission - or so I thought . All the Marines we interacted with were friendly and answered our questions no matter how mundane. As we prepared to leave to set up for the concert, two of the Marines apologized that they wouldn't be able to attend the concert later that night, they were being deployed on that very day to Iraq and then onto Afghanistan. (look for the two Marines saying goodbye in the OTH/USO bonus footage below.) We were all touched by this - Hilarie, Mark and Joe told them to give us a call when they got back to the States and we would have them down to visit us. Obviously, we didn't even know if we were going to get Season 7 at that point. Well, the concert scenes we were shooting required hundreds of Marines to be in the audience as extras and we needed them to be engaged in the shooting when the cameras were rolling but to stay focused between takes. So we sent out onto that stage the only one who could command the attention of that crowd – Hil - and boy, did she knock them out... within minutes she had them eating out of her hand and we started filming... every time the audience would get a little restive Hilarie would jump out and fire them up again and we got everything we needed.

Early December - 2011

Four years is a long time... especially when you're away from your loved ones in a hostile environment surrounded by strangers. When I think of my father, who would have been about the same age as these men, shipping out to face the unknown, it shakes me to my very core. Later, when I was older, my father would share with me little glimpses of what he endured while deployed in those conflicts and it was pretty scary... he told me that what ultimately got him through the darkest times was dreaming of his life back in the States. I put the office phone to my ear and asked the Marine on the other end of the line how it felt to be back home... It was a relief to hear that not only he got back without any injuries but also his buddy that had shipped out with him that night. Before hanging up, I gave him my direct number and our remaining shooting schedule dates, ending the conversation with, he was welcome to visit anytime. A week or two later he called back and asked if he could come visit and if he could bring his wife who was a huge fan of the show... no problem, bring who ever you want I told him, unfortunately his buddy was stuck in San Diego and wouldn't be able to get back in time before we wrapped camera. I looked at the directing schedule and saw that it was Joe Davola's episode. Perfect! I gave Joey D a heads up... the really cool thing is that Joe remembered these men and was very happy about the visit. Right on time, our Marine and his wife showed up for our night’s work at the studio. I ushered them into the set made sure that they had director’s chairs to sit in and made introductions all around to cast and crew, Joe then took over and made sure that they were comfortable behind the director's monitors, right next to him... we wanted them to have the best experience we could. I would come back and check in on them periodically, each time I was greeted by the biggest smiles from them... usually folks start to get a little bored after a couple of hours of watching a scene being shot, over and over - not those two! I invited them to stay and have dinner with us, from the catering truck - which they did. On one of my later trips to set, I noticed that their director's chairs were empty... they finally got bored and left I thought to myself. I found Steve G. and asked him how long ago they had left... “leave?” he said, “no way”... Steve pointed to set and there they were - working as background extras. Joe had worked them into a scene... wow, just wow! That night we did the right thing, we gave back to someone who had done so much for all of us... those lonely nights when he watched our show in those far away countries and thought about the day he could visit our set... somehow he knew we would still be there, because Mark, Joe and Hilarie told him to come visit when he got back. And we were. Semper Fi.

In case you missed it, here’s the link to the Behind The Scenes vid of the USO concert