So this is why he eats for free.
Virginia Ali, the co-founder and owner of Ben’s Chili Bowl, was tasked with giving Bill Cosby an award Wednesday night on behalf of the U.S. Navy Memorial and attributed Ben’s status as a Washington institution to the comedic great.
“He actually put Ben’s Chili Bowl on the map all by himself,” she said, explaining that Cosby brought attention to the U Street eatery in 1985 by holding a press conference there when the restaurant and neighborhood were struggling.
“He could have done this press conference anywhere, he could have been on the White House lawn, but he chose to do that at Ben’s Chili Bowl,” Ali said. “That said to me that this is a man of character, this is a man who loves all people.”
Once Cosby was presented with the Lone Sailor Award, given to distinguished vets, the conversation turned from half-smokes to Cosby’s military service. Turns out, he wasn’t all that gung-ho about it.
“I was never crazy about the Navy, or the Army, or the Marines or the Air Force, but I went through knowing that I was going to join something, how did I want to die?” Cosby said. “If I join the Navy I can die in nice clean clothes in the water — that’s it.”
He also shared some endearing memories about boot camp.
“I never made my bed in my life, I have servants to do that,” he said, pausing. “My mother.” (He indeed learned how to make his bed).
And while he was full of jokes about his four years of military service, he was sentimental about it as well.
“It was not my mother, but it was what my mother should have been,” he said of the Navy.
Former Washington Redskins and Dallas Cowboys quarterback Eddie LeBaron was also honored at Wednesday’s black-tie dinner at the National Building Museum, along with Lanier Phillips, the first black sonar technician in the Navy.
There are signs at Ben’s Chili Bowl that say Cosby and “the Obama family” eat for free.
