UNITED NATIONS - Sen.-elect Elizabeth Dole, Princess Wiwan Wariwan of Thailand and Indian actress and children's book author Madhur Jaffrey are just a few of the women - and, later, men - whose start as tour guides at the United Nations helped shape their lives.

The 50th anniversary of U.N. Guided Tours recently brought back 460 of the alumni for a reunion. They are among 2,000 current and former guides from more than 100 countries who have told the U.N. story in 20 languages to more than 37 million visitors during the past 50 years.

"It was my two summers there which really solidified my interest in the international arena," says Dole, a North Carolina Republican.

It was that experience, Dole says, that led her to "a major in international law at Harvard Law School, and an abiding concern for international affairs in my public service positions both in the federal government and [while heading] the American Red Cross."

The guided tours began in 1952, as soon as the United Nations moved from Lake Success on Long Island to its permanent headquarters along the East River. The General Assembly and Secretariat buildings were considered futuristic at the time, adding an exotic profile to 18 acres of land on First Avenue whose only previous distinction had been as the site of the hanging of Revolutionary War martyr Nathan Hale.

News reports of the public's fascination with its new "world capital" on the transformed "strip of international territory" soon made the area one of the trendiest in Manhattan. The interiors were called "posh" and "eye-popping."

In those less-traveled days, visitors looked forward to having a foreign guide show them around, and were said to be deeply disappointed if they didn't get one. One American actress who worked as a guide once acknowledged that she had conducted an entire tour with a Cockney accent, just to make her tourists happy.

When 500 people showed up for the first tour, The New York Times gave it headlines: "U.N.'s Multilingual Girl Guides Are Smash Hit of Current Session."

By 1953, The Saturday Evening Post was calling the tours "Manhattan's Biggest Side Show," and next year Harper's Magazine said they were "The Best Show in New York."

The illustrations reveal young women with flat, pre-blow-dry hair, military-looking uniforms (braid hung from one shoulder) and the near-cheesecake shots routinely required by editors who, in those days, were usually male - such as a row of outstretched legs as guides on a sofa rested their tired feet.

The articles invariably called these guides "girls," describing them as "bright as buttons," and "quite a little missionary." One Times ad billed the U.N.'s call for guides as "Lovelies Wanted!"

Indian writer Jaffrey, who served from 1958 to 1962 and returned to the United Nations for the anniversary celebration, recalled how one visitor nearly poked her in the stomach while complaining about her sari: "We don't do that in this country, show our bare midriff."

Those were different times: "Where are the bomb shelters?" a Harper's writer overheard one visitor asking a guide in 1954. The Saturday Evening Post reported, "More questions are asked about the Russians than about all other delegations combined." One favorite: "Where did Khrushchev bang his shoe?"

Nina Miness, a French guide from 1952 who went on to work in the U.N. system for more than 40 years, recalls that, "McCarthyism pervaded the country ... the war was on in Korea ... and security clearances and civil service investigators became a part of our lives."

And messages left in the guest book placed hope in the world body during those Cold War years. One guide remembered a man on her watch who rose in an empty General Assembly to declaim from Tennyson's Locksley Hall:

"Till the war-drum throbb'd no longer, and the battle flags were furl'd,/In the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the world."

After a group of blind children toured, one wrote back about a particular carpet: "It had a wonderful, unusual, cozy feeling."

Guides are still on duty, and they still find children appreciative and inquisitive visitors. "Is the secretary-general your father?" one 5-year-old asked a current guide, Marian Aggrey of Ghana.

Clearly disappointed by the answer that Kofi Annan was not her father, the little boy pressed on: "Then is he your husband?"

Apart from the daily briefings they receive on U.N.-related matters, the guides are free to decide how to fill each hourlong tour and what is important about the world body - be it clearing land mines from war zones, clean water brought by a simple hand pump to some remote village or teaching adults the skills they need to earn a better life for their children.

Kevin Kennedy from the United States recalls being one of the first male guides. (The women's movement removed early barriers to males.) He became a guide in 1977, when the service was 25 years old.

Men now make up about a quarter of the guide staff of 52 people from 32 countries. And Kennedy, who works in the secretary-general's executive office, is also among the rare guides who have managed to scale another invisible wall - between the guides and staff employment.

All tours cover the Security Council, General Assembly and exhibits on peacekeeping, decolonization and disarmament, including artifacts from the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that, even among staffers, never fail to astonish.

They also include the United Nations' vast collection of art - such as an ivory carving of the Chinese railroad that took eight of that country's artists working on eight elephant tusks two years to complete.

All guides must be fluent in English and at least one other language, with public speaking skills and some college education. Many give tours in three or four languages. Mandarin is the most commonly requested language after English, followed by French, Spanish and Japanese.

Though uniforms have been designed by the likes of Christian Dior and today are by Mondrian, with footwear by Valleverde, guides can choose to wear their national dress.

Some years, the United Nations attracts more visitors than the Statue of Liberty, according to Shashi Tharoor, undersecretary-general for communications and public information. The tours, which cost $1 in 1952, now cost $8.50 for an adult.

Since the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, Tharoor says, tours have been down by about 30 percent from their previous monthly average of 30,000 visitors, reflecting increased security restrictions and an overall decrease in visitors to New York. When the tours were temporarily suspended after the attack, the guides worked as volunteers in the city's relief operations.

It all creates a bonding that made their homecoming "quite amazing," says Helene Hoedl, an Austrian in charge of the Guided Tours Unit. The festivities included a private opening ceremony in the General Assembly.

"They all ran down to sit in their country's chair, which they never did as guides," says Hoedl, a former guide. "Some even went up to stand at the podium."

A current guide from Colombia, Melissa Maldonado, may have summed up the guiding experience best:

"There is no other place in this world where you can drink Colombian coffee with your Senegalese friend in your Italian uniform, ... wave at the Trinidadian security officer, give a tour to a group of Australian visitors and then attend a lecture on the situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo with your Japanese co-worker, who just so happens to be married to a Burmese citizen of Iranian descent."

And at night, says Maldonado, "I know I did what I could to let everyone know that we're all part of this complex process toward world peace."