By Admin (Admin) (C629501-A - 24.21.234.167) on Friday, July 20, 2001 - 10:39 pm:

Star treatment


By Chris Vaughn Star-Telegram Staff Writer
FORT WORTH - The lavish hotel rooms with terry cloth robes and marble baths, the stretch limousines, the pan-seared this and the pureed that, the after-dinner conversations with Tom Hanks.

The high-rolling celebrity has been planted on a couple of crusty grandfathers - Ralph Spina, 81, of Fort Worth and J.B. Stokes, 78, of Reno in Parker County - who are wholly unaccustomed to such fuss. Tonight, the two make their latest appearance at a movie premiere in Dallas.

Not a bad way to treat a couple of old dogfaces.

"We can't get over it," Stokes said. "It don't seem quite real."

The cause of all this late-life hoopla is HBO's 10-week series `Band of Brothers,' based on the men of E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, who started the war on D-Day and fought their way to Hitler's private lair 11 months later.

Spina and Stokes were among the young men whose exploits have already garnered the attention of the noted historian Stephen Ambrose, who wrote the bestselling `Band of Brothers' in 1992.

Hanks and Steven Spielberg took the idea and produced the HBO series, reportedly the most expensive TV project ever at $120 million.

Spina, a medic, is played by Tony Devlin. Stokes, a rifleman, didn't make the book, so he didn't make the movie either. The only other living Texan in Easy Company is Denver Randleman.

Improbable as this luxury ride has been for the two longtime friends, they haven't hesitated to enjoy it.

Stokes, a retired water and sewer administrator in Azle, still answers his phone. But he has this publicist, and before he agrees to an interview, she really ought to know about it.

"I hope you don't mind, but they've been real nice to us," he says.

On the other hand, Spina, who has done consulting for amusement parks for years, isn't quite as embarrassed about the star treatment.

"We treated them good, too," he says in his south Philly accent.

On Wednesday afternoon, the two men and their wives were whisked from their homes for a night at the Crescent Court hotel in Dallas, where the cheap rooms are $390 a night and a maid tidies them twice a day.

They'll probably squeeze in an interview or two today before the ride to the Majestic Theatre for an invitation-only screening of the series. After that comes the hobnobbing with corporate CEOs, politicians and actors.

Just six weeks ago, the two men and their entourages (that's a word reserved for men in their circles) returned from France, "where they had more booze than you could shake a stick at," Spina recalled.

There were the nights in the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, the chartered American Airlines jet with a physician on board, the Ambassador in the Ninth Arondissement in Paris, the escargot and foie gras.

"Every meal we had was a spread," Stokes said. "As much as you could eat. I don't know what I had, but it was good."

On the 57th anniversary of the D-Day landing, HBO bused the 30 or so surviving veterans and their families to Normandy for a ceremony and another screening of the series. Spina and Stokes sat onstage, featured guests of the dignitaries.

"It was an unbelievable thrill," Stokes said. "When we were marching up the street and those troops snapped to attention, that was a pretty good lick, wasn't it?" he said as he slapped Spina's leg.

Spina and Stokes consider the series a pretty good representation of combat, at least as close as a movie can get. Their thanks go to Hanks in particular. He's smart and there's no high-hat about him, they agreed.

"All the boys love him," Spina said.

cvaughn@star-telegram.com