University Place

>> I'd like to introduce Bill Wood. Bill has enjoyed a life-long fascination with aviation. He built aircraft models, and still does. He took his first plane ride in a yellow Piper Cub at the age of 11, and he began his flight lessons in Aeronca Champ during his college years. He has piloted a variety of Cessnas and has ridden in helicopters, a Boeing 747 jetliner to Japan, Mitsubishi MU-2 turboprop, and more recently, I'm jealous, a P-51 Mustang. That's a rarity. After college graduation, Bill spent two years as active duty in the US Naval Reserve and later embarked on a 43-year career as a mechanical engineer. Bill holds a private pilots license, is a volunteer docent here and at the Planes of Fame, which is an air museum in Chino, California. He is a member of EAA. His interests include writing articles and fiction pieces, several of which have been published in aviation and engineering trade magazines, and researching and developing PowerPoint presentations on aviation subjects. Bill and his wife Nancy, thank you for coming, Nance, live in Plover, Wisconsin, celebrated their 51st wedding anniversary this month. Congratulations.

APPLAUSE

They have two children, daughter Carrie and son Bill, plus six grandchildren. Without further ado, please help me welcome Bill Wood.

APPLAUSE

>> I've got to put this down. I'm not quite as tall as Bob. But thank you, Bob, for the introduction. I'd like to welcome everyone here tonight, and especially anyone who may be a World War II vet or had a relative, a father, grandfather, aunt, uncle, anyone that was in that conflict. That was a tremendous upheaval time for America, and it was different than anything that has occurred probably any time in our history. There were 15 million people in uniform at that time, and that's a lot. That would be a tremendous amount even today, but when you consider that the population of America was only about 140 million, that's more than 10% of the people. Everyone was involved either directly or indirectly. There were people who, of course, had worked in the defense plants, but just ordinary people who raised victory gardens, they provided their car bumpers for the war effort and many other activities of that sort. There was also food rationing and that kind of thing. What I want to talk to you about tonight is the story of one couple that was caught up in that great tumult, and their story is one that I personally would like to see not get lost in the fog of history or fog of time. One thing that I would like to state very clearly is that I am not a historian. I'm not any kind of expert. I'm just a guy that's loved aviation all of his life. And I would also appreciate it if you could hold questions to the end. I've got quite a few slides, and I'll never get through them if there are questions. I would definitely entertain them at the end. As you can see, the title of my presentation is A High Flying Love Story. I think that's quite appropriate considering just a few days ago was Valentine's Day. In 1945, the national news media termed their marriage the wedding of the year. They ranked it ahead of a number of other famous couples, including Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. 1200 people attended their wedding, and that's just the ones that could get inside the church. A larger crowd stood outside, and this was in Superior in northern Wisconsin in the middle of winter. Here comes their wedding cake. Weighed close to a thousand pounds. Celebrities of that era sought them out, wanted their photos taken with them. And the celebrities wanted their autographs instead of the other way around. I picked this particular group of celebrities in hopes that people might recognize who they are today. In the upper photo is Judy Garland, the star of Wizard of Oz. In the center photo is Lucille Ball. I think most everybody has seen I Love Lucy. And then Van Johnson appeared in a number of movies in the 1940s era. It was mentioned here that you're going to see Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo. I believe he's in that one. And then, finally, at the bottom is Angela Lansbury, who most of us remember for her role in Murder, She Wrote on TV. So just who are they anyway? Well, let's talk a little bit about Dick first. He was born in 1920. He was the first of nine children to Carl and Dora Bong. They were Swedish immigrants who settled on a farm in northwestern Wisconsin. The nearest town is Poplar. It's about maybe 15 miles east of Superior, but their farm was three and a half miles outside of Poplar. Dick grew up in the area, did all the high school things, and he also built model airplanes. What had happened is in 1928 he saw his first aircraft. It flew over the Bong family farm, and from then on he was just, he had his eyes focused on a career in aviation. To that end, he enrolled in Superior State Teachers College, which is now UW Superior. And his whole goal here was to complete two years so that he could be eligible to enter the US Army Air Corps, which he did in May of 1941. I might point out that it was only a month or two after this that the Air Corps officially changed its name to the United States Army Air Forces, and I'll refer to it something like that throughout the rest of the presentation. At that time, the Air Force was under the auspices of the Army. It was not an independent service like it is today. But Dick was proceeding towards his goal, getting training, but then this happened. December 7, 1941, Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and other bases or other sites on Oahu and inflicted terrible damage, both in terms of personnel people and equipment. And this was just part of a coordinated attack. Just a few hours later, they launched attacks in the Philippines, Pacific Islands, and various places in Southeast Asia. Even though it says Monday up here, it really was the same day. It was on the other side of the international dateline. This changed Dick's life with one of several events that changed his life. He continued his training and eventually began fighter pilot training. May of '42 he was assigned to the 49th Fighter Squadron at Hamilton Field, which is located just, I should say was located just a bit north of San Francisco. And this was the first squadron to be equipped with the P-38 fighter, and, at the time, that was the fastest, hottest thing in the Air Force inventory. During the course of Dick's military service, he wrote 170 letters to his mother, and she saved them all. Here's what he had to say about the P-38. "Dear mom, well, today I flew a P-38. Whoeey! What an airplane. That's all I can say, but that's enough." Here's a shot of Dick and some other members of the squadron getting ready for a training mission. Dick is second from the left in this photograph. Now, shortly thereafter, another event occurred in Dick's life that changed the course of his military career. He and three other pilots were accused of flying under the Golden Gate Bridge. Then, later, down the length of Market Street, which is the main thoroughfare in San Francisco. Witnesses to this event, they claim that they could look down from their second story office windows on these airplanes. Now, Dick always maintained he didn't fly under the bridge, but he did admit to buzzing Market Street, then a little bit later blowing some clothes off of a clothesline of an Oakland woman across the harbor from San Francisco. The situation here was that next door to this woman was a couple, one of the pilots in his squadron who had just been married and they were giving him a little wedding gift. He also admitted to doing a loop down inside the Grand Canyon back in his training days. His commanding officer, General George Kenney, eventually didn't court martial him because he himself had flown under the Brooklyn Bridge 25 years earlier when he was a cadet. However, as punishment, he required Dick to write a 5,000-word thesis and then read it to the entire squadron. A thesis on safe flying. In addition, he dropped Dick from the squadron and then grounded him. Now, during this period of time, Dick didn't know that he was not going to be court martialed. He thought he might end up in the infantry or possibly even worse. So he was a pretty discouraged guy at this time. And while Dick was grounded, the 49th Squadron was moved, first to an air base in England and then later to a forward combat base in North Africa. And it's very likely that if Dick had gone with the 49th, his whole career would have been quite different. If we jump forward a couple of months, General Kenney is now the commanding officer of the 5th Air Force in the South Pacific under the overall command of General Douglas MacArthur. Kenney liked the P-38. He thought it was a great airplane. There weren't any P-38 squadrons flying in the southwest Pacific, so he wanted to organize a squadron. One of the first people he thought of was Dick Bong. He remembered Dick from the Golden Gate Bridge incident. So a few weeks later, Dick found himself on the island of New Guinea. That's about half a world away from Wisconsin, and might as well be on a different planet it's so different from what we experience here. Dick's squadron flew a series of uneventful missions without ever encountering any, excuse me, enemy aircraft. But on December 27th, he had his first encounter with the enemy and destroyed two planes in that encounter. Private Fred Johnson, who's also from Superior, was a soldier on the ground underneath this aerial battle. Here's what he had to say. "Suddenly Japanese bombers loomed into view over the strip, flying low at about 400 feet. Overhead were zero fighters, too numerous to estimate. About then, the first of the P-38 fighters arrived, four of them." Dick was among that group of four. "They engaged the enemy bombers. Zero fighters dove to counterattack. One pilot was repeatedly urging other American pilots to get into the fight." That was Dick. "Several bombers and zero fighters were observed on fire and crashing at sea. The troops on the ground were rooting and cheering the action like fans at an athletic contest. It was evident the America pilots had won a great victory." Now, as the weeks and months progressed, Dick's victory total increased, and he became an object of media attention. This particular photograph was taken, he had just come back from a mission. He was on his way to the showers. A news photographer wanted his photo, it was getting dark, couldn't wait, so here's what he got. And Dick later sent a print of this to his mom and thought it was really funny. Here's Dick with a couple of his crew members in New Guinea. Now, by November of '43, after a year of action in New Guinea, Dick was a leading Air Force ace with 21 victories. At that point, General Kenney sent him home on leave. He arrived home to a hero's welcome. The picture on the lower right there is a shot of Poplar as it appeared in 1943. If you drive through there today, it's not a whole lot different. You can see, you can recognize quite a few of these buildings. His brother, Carl, who's in the upper left of the left photo there, later wrote this about Dick's homecoming. The first reporters to arrive were from the local Superior Evening Telegram. They took human interest photos of mom, dad, and the whole Bong family. After chores were done and the supper dishes put away, we settled in to wait for Dick's arrival. Around seven o'clock, someone shouted there was a car coming in the driveway. It turned out to be more news photographers from Superior. We gathered around Nelda, one of Dick's sisters, at the piano to sing songs of the day but none was sung with more gusto than the Army Air Corps song. There were more cars and more newsmen. United Press, Associated Press, and the International News Service. Some representatives from the Superior American Legion arrived followed by a group of Dick's former professors from Superior State Teachers College. By this time, the house was beginning to fill up. Later it became down right crowded when 29 members of the ROTC band arrived.

Around 1

15 we spotted another set of lights in the driveway. This time it was the captain. We talked quite a bit about Dick, so what about Marge? She was born in Grand Forks, North Dakota, but raised in the Superior area. In the fall of 1941, she was also a student at Superior State, and in '42 she was elected homecoming queen. And that presented the occasion for the first meeting between Dick and Marge. The following year in 1943 when Dick had just arrived back in the states, Marge, who's on the far right in this photo, as the outgoing homecoming queen, she was responsible for the coronation of the new queen. So they thought it would be a really great idea if they asked Dick Bong, this war hero that they had heard all about, if he was do the honors to crown the new queen. And he did. Now, at the event itself, Marge and Dick didn't really have a whole lot of time to talk. There was a lot going on, and Marge had to stay afterward to help clean up. Many of the students congregated at a place called Chef's Restaurant in Superior. By the time Marge got there, the place was completely full. As she walked in with a friend of hers, Dick saw them across the room, stood up, and waved them on over to his table. And that's really when they first had a chance to become a bit acquainted with each other. The next day, Dick requested his sister Gerry, who was also a Superior State student, to see if she could arrange a double date with Marge. You got to kind of get the picture here. Here's a guy who had spent a year in combat in New Guinea. He was the leading Air Force ace, and he had to ask his sister to fix him up with a date. But the next day, Dick did something that was uncharacteristic. He brought Marge out to the farm and introduced her to the rest of the Bong family. Her reflections on this event

were

"My studying for tests was interrupted by Gerry, who dropped a bombshell. She was acting as Dick's emissary to ask if I would like to double date that night. Would I? No question about it.

It was set for 7

00 PM." From then on, they got together whenever they could but not as often as they would have liked. The Air Force had other ideas. They didn't send Dick home to be part of family reunions or meet beautiful young women. They expected him to tour the country on a really hectic schedule, taking part in public relations events and war bond rallies and that sort of thing. Dick didn't like this. Some of his letters to his mom he really expressed his dislike for this kind of activity. But, unfortunately, he was good at it. The audiences responded to him well. He had a direct approach. He just laid out the war picture as plainly as he could, and it just went over really well. For example, in one of these bond rallies, more than $250,000 was pledged, and if you think of that, that's 1943 dollars. I have no idea what that would be today, but if somebody had a person like Dick who would be guaranteed to fill all the seats and raise money like that, you'd want him out there on your side doing that, I think. He also was pursued by the news reporters, the news hawks as he called them, and, again, he gave them good stories. They liked what he had to say. Here's a shot of Dick receiving an award from the shipyard in Duluth. That's his mom standing next to him in that photo. A bit later he was presented, it was a photo of himself from the women welders in the shipyard, and they named him their number one pinup boy. It was a signed photo. They'd all signed the picture. He even operated, or excuse me, occupied the governor's chair briefly. Now, Dick, here he is with Bing Crosby, and I'm sure you've all heard him. White Christmas is one of the staples of the Christmas season. This is at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, and it was advertised as Bing and Bong at the Bowl. Dick was a credible singer. He had sung in quartets and choirs and even on the radio a time or two. He probably wasn't in Crosby's class, but he was still fairly good. But I'll let you judge for yourself. >>? Be sure it's true?? When you say I love you?? It's a sin to tell a lie?? So be sure it's true?? When you say I love you?? For it's a sin to tell a lie? >> Now, Dick disliked all this notoriety, but sometimes it wasn't so bad. Dick and Marge were able to see each other occasionally, and by January of '44, Dick was getting prepared to go back to New Guinea. They knew they were in love, and they wanted to marry. But Dick was adamantly opposed to marrying while he was still in combat. One of his less pleasant duties while he was home was visiting the families of some of the fliers who had been lost in action. He didn't want Marge to ever have to suffer that kind of sorrow. But in February of '44 Dick is back in New Guinea. Shortly thereafter, achieves his 22nd aerial victory. In early March, a good friend of his, Tom Lynch, was killed in action. Tom was a P-38 pilot that Dick had flown with the entire time of his deployment as a fighter pilot. Tom's death hit Dick really hard. Corporal Herman Ladner, who's a member of Dick's ground crew,

had this to say

"The only time I saw Dick nervous was when he came in after Colonel Lynch was shot down. He had 87 bullet holes in one engine. None hit a vital spot." Later, Dick spoke about this to his mother in one of his

letters

"Dear mom, did I tell you I picked up a few bullet holes again the day Colonel Lynch went down? Nothing serious, but it hurt by pride a little." From that, you can see that sons don't always tell their mothers the whole story. Both about the sorrow of his loss over his friend and the danger of what he was doing. Now, what happened next here was some of the writers attributed to an attempt by Dick to get over the loss of Tom, Tom Lynch. But what he did was he approached another friend of his, Jim Nichols, who was an intelligence officer, and he gave Dick a small wallet-sized photo of Marge, Marge's graduation picture. Nichols enlarged it and color tinted it. For the younger members of the crowd, you probably have no idea what this is. You just choose color film, right? Color film existed then, it just wasn't used too widely. But then they attached it to the nose of Dick's plane. Usually what I do when I talk to people is I bring along little model of a P-38, but today I got a real one behind us.

LAUGHTER

letters

I bought this at the EAA gift shop, incidentally. Dick continued flying. In April, he achieved victory number 27, which made him America's all-time ace of ace. He exceeded Eddie Rickenbacker's record of 21 from World War I, excuse me, 26 from World War I. Now, the news people, they really liked this story. So the pictures of Dick and his plane just flashed across the country in magazines, newspapers, even news reels. It made Marge an instant celebrity. Now she had to learn how to deal

with the news media herself

"Shots were taken of me student teaching in the classroom, at our campus hangout, the coffee shop, at my home taking baked rolls out of the oven. Hey, I couldn't even cook. Mom made those. And at my part-time job. I learned to think before I spoke. Served me well on many occasions later on." So Kenney first promoted Dick to the rank of major and then grounded him another time again. And for the second time, he ordered him to return to the states. June 1, 1944, Dick and Marge got away by themselves for a little while. Dick presented her with a ring, and it was official. They were engaged. But he was still opposed to marrying while he was in combat. This is a newspaper clipping of Dick meeting Tom Lynch's mother and expressing his condolences over the loss of Tom. Now things really ramped up. Here's Dick with Hap Arnold, the commanding officer of the entire United States Army Air Forces. The fellow on the left, the far left, is Bob Johnson. He was a P-47 pilot who flew in Europe, and in the meantime, he had equaled Dick's record of 27 victories. The Air Force had Dick touring the country, meeting with all sorts of dignitaries, more war bond rallies, appearing on radio shows, anything else that they could think of that would promote the cause of raising funds for the war. This time, Marge was part of a lot of these events as well. On this second tour, the first tour Dick had to take trains, things like that, the second tour the Air Force provided him with a P-38, and it was painted up something like the one behind you here. It wasn't a really good replica, if anybody's seen photos of it. But anyway, he had the opportunity to fly around the country in this plane. And here he's buzzing the town of Duluth. He also buzzed places like Milwaukee, Poplar, Superior, and we have it on good authority from a fellow who was there that he also made several low altitude passes over Marge's parents' home in Superior. They may have had second thought about their daughter being engaged to this guy. But wouldn't it be great if we could see Dick zoom by in his big silver P-38? Maybe with the help of a little technology. While he was home this time, Dick completed an aerial gunnery course in Texas. And prior to the course, he always claimed that he was a poor marksman and had to fly in really close to his targets. His fellow pilots, they said yes, he flew close to the planes. A lot of times he was within 50 feet before he opened fire. But they also said that he wasn't nearly as poor a marksman as he claimed to be. That was just part of his ability to understate. He rarely beat his own drum or tried to be self-aggrandizing. So when Dick reported back to New Guinea this time, General Kenney assigned him as an instructor to train pilots in these new aerial gunnery techniques, which Dick also said that he wished he knew these techniques the first time out there. They really hadn't trained them that well in his early days. And he allowed Dick to fly along on some of the missions just to observe what was happening, see how the pilots were using the new information. But he prohibited him from shooting, except in self-defense. A few days later, Dick shot down two more Japanese planes in self-defense. So guess what? Kenney grounded him again. But that didn't last too long. The invasion of the Philippines on the island of Leyte occurred a few days later. Now Kenney was hard-pressed to put his best pilots in the air. The Japanese air force was out in numbers to try and drive the Americans off the beaches. It wasn't long after that that this air strip on Leyte, Tacloban Air Strip, was captured. It was a Japanese air strip. And Dick led the first flight of four P-38s into the field. In the fall of '44, a victory race developed. And this is another one of these things that the media really loved. That was between Dick and a fellow named Tommy McGuire. Both of these guys were skilled pilots, very good at what they did, and, as it happened, McGuire seemed to stay eight behind Dick for the whole fall. But they respected each other and sometimes even flew on missions together. I might point out that throughout the fall here Dick was grounded more than two-thirds of the time. He flew 26 missions between October, excuse me, September and December and only four in December. By early December, Bong-38, McGuire-30. He was still eight behind. December 12th, General MacArthur awarded Dick the Medal of Honor, and this was at a special ceremony at the Tacloban Air Strip. It was raining that day. They both got soaked. December 17th, Dick achieved his 40th aerial victory. General Kenney was under a lot of pressure, as he put it, it was all the way from his desk sergeant to Hap Arnold, to send Dick home because there had been a number of American leading aces that had been killed in combat and they didn't want that to happen to Dick. So he grounded him one more time, ordered him to return, and gave him a bit of advice. At this point, Dick, he was America's ace of aces. Two years in combat operations, 207 combat missions, over 500 hours in combat. He protested his return orders initially. He thought he could perhaps reach a total of 50, 60, or even more. But he finally relented and began his journey home. Now, perhaps he wasn't too happy about going home, but Gerry and Marge were definitely pleased. So were Dick's mom and dad. Here they are getting a telephone call from Dick. He called them from San Francisco when he got back in America. And I might point out that this was Dick's second phone call. You can probably guess who the first one went to. Dick again was welcomed as a hero in America. Now, unfortunately, January 7, 1945, the victory race ended when Tommy McGuire was killed in combat. At this point, his victory total was 38, second only to Dick's 40. They obtained their marriage license and were married on February 10, 1945. Now, for any of you out there who have sons or daughters, have been involved in a marriage with them,

just think of this

the marriage of the year was planned, executed, and carried off in about six weeks. At the ceremony, they said their vows four times. First one was for real, and three more times for the benefit of the media. Here they are, America's golden couple, known across the nation. They're cutting their wedding cake. You might wonder why it's a ship on there instead of an airplane. First, to begin with, it was donated by a shipyard, so that's one connection. The other one is that a year or so earlier, Dick's mother had christened a ship called the USS Grainger, and it served as the model for this ship on the wedding cake. There was a wedding movie made. It first aired in a Chicago TV station, one of the first ones in the country. It played in news reels and is now stored in the National Archives so anyone can see it if they want to. They're honeymoon took them many places, but one of which was Sequoia National Park in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California. At Dick's request, the Air Force assigned him to the project of the development project for the P-80 shooting star jet fighter. This was a plane that was also produced by Lockheed, same as the P-38. And Dick had seen one of these on one of his earlier trips there, and he wanted to be part of this program. The whole idea here was to get this plane ready for the invasion of the Japanese main islands, which was scheduled for November of 1945. Now, they settled into an apartment in Hollywood. Life was good. One afternoon, Marge went out to the Lockheed plant, and Dick took her for a ride in a P-38 much like this one. She claimed that Dick liked to sing while he was flying, so she not only got a tour of the Los Angeles area but a concert of Paper Doll and many of the other popular songs of that time. As always, the celebrities sought them out. These are maybe a little less recognizable. Crosby in the upper one, and Art Linkletter is in the bottom one. If you remember him from his TV show. Their hopes and dreams just stretched out forever. And then tragedy. On August 6, 1945, Dick became the seventh test pilot killed in the development of the P-80 fighter since acceptance testing had begun the previous October. Now, unfortunately, the media broadcast the story before any of the family members, Marge and the others, were notified. Marge heard about it on the radio while she was in her apartment. She ran down the hall, pounded on doors. No one was home. She was alone. But not for long. Her apartment soon filled. Photographers, reporters, Air Force officials. Someone even asked if she was pregnant. The story of Dick's death shared headlines with the bombing of Hiroshima, which occurred on that same date. Two days later, the Air Force flew Marge back to Superior, and Dick's funeral was held at the same church where the couple had been married just six months previously. Here's a shot of the funeral procession. Dick was buried in Poplar, 15 miles from Superior. Dick epitomized the ideal of the citizen soldier, an ordinary man who performed extraordinary deeds in service of his country. Marge received thousands of letters. She responded to them all. This one is a personal letter from General Hap Arnold. And this is a message from President Harry Truman. Afterward, she was asked to take part in numerous ceremonies and dedications related to Dick Bong, and General Kenney took part in some of these as well. At this point, she was just 22 and still alone.

Her account of this was

"It was a long time before I could bring myself to read the accounts of the funeral in the newspapers. The years that followed were difficult ones." "I didn't talk to anyone who brought up his name to me. I was suspicious." Many had had some sort of get rich quick scheme that they were proposing to her. "I locked all those memories in my heart. The precious ones, the painful ones when I lost him." "I was terribly shy, reluctant to reveal any emotions or feelings." In time, Marge forged a new life, first as a fashion model, a bit later as an instructor for fashion models. Here she was able to utilize her Superior State Teachers College training, and then later on yet she became a writer for fashion magazines and a photo shoot coordinator. As she put it, she was the one who made sure the models' dresses didn't have wrinkles. Sometimes she had to stick a bottle of hairspray in their belt behind them so it tightened up everything, tightened up the clothing, and took care of all the details. Now, in this endeavor, she met a fellow named Murray Drucker. Murray was a magazine publisher. He had also served in World War II, but he was in the Coast Guard patrolling the east coast of the United States. And his ship was involved in the sinking of at least one German submarine. At the time he met Marge, he was the publisher of a magazine called the California Girl. A fashion magazine. He also had kind of an eclectic mix of magazines. He liked dogs, as you can see. He has a collie in this photograph. So he had several dog journals that the published, and he also published tennis magazines. So there's a little bit of a strange mix. But they eventually married and raised two daughters. In 1956, Murray encouraged Marge on a new career for her, and that was she began writing and publishing a magazine called the Boxer Review. It's a breed specific dog magazine. Murray already had some others like that for other dog breeds. Throughout all of this, she used a professional name of Kris Doll to protect her privacy, and she even appeared in Who's Who of American Women under that name of Kris Doll. People whom she dealt with on a daily basis really didn't know anything. Had no idea that she was Marge. The magazine itself was successful. It was judged the best of its type a few times during the years it was published. She continued to write and publish this magazine for more than 40 years. The way she did it was she had an office set up in her home, and that was so that she could work on the magazine projects and also raise her daughters at the same time. She and Murray had purchased a home in Laurel Canyon in the Hollywood Hills. Murray's office was somewhere outside the home. For 39 years, Marge remained silent about her previous life with Dick Bong. But in 1985, she was approached by Dick's sisters, and they asked her if she would like to take part in the dedication of the Richard Bong Memorial Bridge that spans the waters between Superior, Wisconsin, and Duluth, Minnesota. In her writing, she said she was inclined to do it. She didn't really know why. Maybe it had just been long enough. But first she had to talk to her family, especially her daughters. They knew she'd been married but had no idea she had been a national celebrity. But the family encouraged her to go ahead with it, to take part in the bridge dedication. So she did. This was an uplifting, heartfelt experience for her. Among other things, the Bong family welcomed her back as if she'd never been gone. Afterward, she made another crossroads decision. From then on, she would devote much of her energies to two things. One was preserving the heritage of America's veterans of all wars, not just World War II. But she could see that many of the World War II people were passing, and their stories were being lost. She didn't want that to take place. The other was establishing a permanent center honoring Richard Bong, her former husband and America's ace of aces. So for the next several years, she went to different kinds of events, dedications, award ceremonies, fund raisers, air shows, all sorts of things in the effort of raising money to achieve these two goals. In the midst of this, her husband Murray passed away. And once again Marge found herself a widow. They were a close-knit family and it was really hard for everyone, but this time it was a bit different. She had her daughters, her wise daughters as she put it, who encouraged her to talk through the emotions and just work her way through it to get past the loss of Murray. In any event, she continued with her activities. She was interviewed as part of a public television documentary. In '94, Marge and Gerry Bong Fechtelkotter-- this is the same Gerry that arranged the double date between Dick and Marge-- they took part in what was called the Bong-McGuire Remembrance Day at the Planes of Fame Air Museum in Chino, California. And as Bob told you, we are from California, but while I was out there, I was a docent of this museum. So got to get in a little plug. In '95, she wrote a book called Memories, which is her reflections on her life, both with Dick and afterward. The book itself is a compilation of contemporary writing, writing that was done in 1945 while she was married to Dick. And this came about because she was working on a manuscript that she hoped would become a book, and, actually, Dick didn't know about this. She was doing this while he was out testing the P-80 fighter. It was never published as a book, but it later saw print as a series of syndicated news articles. But the part of the book were based on these. In fact, she was working on this manuscript when she heard the news of Dick's death. Now, what she found was that signed copies of this book became really hot items at the different events that she went to. Her daughter, Karen, told me that she was treated like a rock star. People crowded around her and Marge herself just couldn't believe it. But the signature that you see in this photo, I have a copy of Marge's book back on a table back here along with some other things, but it came out of that book. The signed copies of aviation art sold well also. The LA Times ran a feature article, a feature story about Marge, and it chronicled not only her life with Dick but the efforts that she had made afterward in preserving the heritage of America's veterans. September 2002 was the grand opening of the Richard Bong Veterans Historical Center in Superior, Wisconsin. Now, the centerpiece is another large P-38. Looks, again, quite a lot like this one, but the museum not only has information about Richard Bong but about veterans of all wars. It's small, by comparison, to EAA, but well worth seeing if you're ever up that way. And I might point out that EAA also is involved in preserving the heritage of America's veterans. They have a great collection of those types of articles. Here's a shot of Marge just before the ceremony, maybe looking just a bit apprehensive. But afterward, she was all smiles. Her long held dream had just become reality. I'd like to point out that the Bong tradition lives on. In this photo, on the left is James Conrad Bong. That's Dick youngest brother. He's pinning wings on the chest of his own son, James Ira Bong, who had just become a second lieutenant in the US Air Force, and those wings that he is wearing once belonged to Dick Bong. Jim Bong told me that he wore those wings throughout his whole Air Force career. A couple of years later, Jim won an award as a top air pilot. And this how the MC introduced him that evening. Of course, Jim flies an F-15 jet fighter rather than a P-38 like Dick flew, but, as Jim put it, they're both twin engine fighters, and that's a great comfort having that extra engine. This is a shot of Jim more recently, and he was, at the time, the commanding officer of the air detachment responsible for the defense of the state of Hawaii. Since then, Jim has retired from the Air Force and is now flying for one of the commercial carriers. In 2002, Marge sold her Hollywood Hills home and moved to a home that she had had built on the Bong family farm near Poplar. September 27, 2003, Marge passed away, also a victim of cancer. She was 79. Today, Marge lies in the Bong family plot in Poplar alongside the grave of Dick Bong, her first husband and first love. Before I close, I'd like to offer special thanks to several people who helped put this PowerPoint presentation together. The first are the Bong siblings

that I talked to

Gerry, Joyce, Jim and Carl. Unfortunately, in the past year both Jim and Carl passed away, but they did, all of them, everybody I talked to was very enthusiastic and more than willing to help. I mentioned Lieutenant Colonel Jim Bong. I've talked to him several times on the phone and many emails. Karen Drucker, this is one of Marge's daughters, she has, like the others, been very enthusiastic. Bob Fuhrman is the Director of the Richard Bong Veterans Heritage Center. He said down with me for a couple of hours going over slides, giving me some ideas, and correcting a few things here and there. And, finally, my wife of 51 years, Nancy. She puts up with my idiosyncrasies every day and offers both encouragement and constructive criticism when perhaps no one else will. I'm concluding the presentation with this photo. We've seen it earlier, but the reason is that this was Marge's favorite photo of her and Dick together. Again, I would like to thank you, and especially anyone who is a veteran or has connection to veterans. I've enjoyed being here, and I hope that this presentation was enjoyable for you as well. Now, at this point, if you have questions I will attempt to address them and maybe even have a few answers, who knows.

APPLAUSE