A Time When ‘Hero’ Meant Something Much More

She was Marge, the pretty redhead who became “the most shot-after girl in the South Pacific” when she was immortalized as nose art on a P-38 flown by America’s top World War II ace, Maj. Richard Ira Bong.

Today, Marge Bong Drucker, 72, lives in Laurel Canyon, publishes a magazine for boxer breeders and, after years of self-imposed anonymity, is helping spearhead a campaign to build a center honoring Bong and the other heroes of 50 years ago.

The story of Dick and Marge Bong--a story of love and marriage and tragedy against the backdrop of “the good war”--began in middle America when boy met girl in a scenario reminiscent of war as seen by MGM.

It was November 1943 and Marge Vattendahl was a junior at Superior (Wisconsin) State Teachers’ College, where she’d been 1942 homecoming queen. As Bong, a war hero from nearby Poplar, was home on leave, Marge and her sorority sisters decided to ask him to crown the new queen.

She was immediately attracted to the blond, blue-eyed, 23-year-old Army Air Corps captain with his rows of medals and a manner she describes as “modest, but not bashful, unassuming but not confused, proud but not arrogant.” One thing he liked about her was that she didn’t ask questions such as, “How does it feel to be a hero?”

By the time he’d ended a war bond tour--which brought him to California and a “Bing and Bong” rally with Bing Crosby at the Hollywood Bowl--and returned to combat two months later, Marge and Dick were an item.

He hadn’t proposed marriage. He’d seen too many brokenhearted war widows and he’d had a few narrow escapes, once crash-landing his plane on its belly.

But, wanting her with him, he had her photograph blown up and plastered on the nose of his plane, with “MARGE” in blue and red script. About this time, he was breaking Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker’s World War I record of 26 downed enemy planes.

Wire services sent out photos of Bong and his plane, and Marge became a reluctant celebrity. Bong wrote to his mother: “I hope I haven’t gotten Marge into too much trouble . . . but it sure is a hell of a lot better than a lot of these naked women we see on the planes here!”

The couple became engaged while he was home on leave that June, Bong finding time to pop the question between conferences at the Pentagon, lunch with senators and more bond drives.

Then it was back to the South Pacific, where his fame spread: 36 kills. In December 1944, Gen. Douglas MacArthur presented Bong with the Medal of Honor. After his 40th victory--a record that still stands--he was sent home. No more combat.

Marge and Dick’s wedding, in February 1945, turned into a media event, voted by United Press as one of the top 10 weddings of the year, right up there with that of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.

They honeymooned in Southern California, where the stars came out to meet them--Judy Garland, Angela Lansbury, Lucille Ball, Van Johnson. At Lockheed in Burbank, Marge took her first “piggyback” ride in a single-seater P-38, holding onto Richard for dear life.

Not long afterward, Bong reported to Lockheed as a military test pilot. The newlyweds settled into a Hollywood apartment they called “The Cockroach Towers.” Each morning, sending Dick off, Marge would say, “Just be careful.” It was a happy time.

Marge was alone in the apartment Aug. 6 when she heard the news on the radio. Maj. Richard Bong was killed when a Lockheed P-80 “Shooting Star,” America’s first operational jet, malfunctioned as he flew over North Hollywood. Witnesses later told her he guided the plane away from an area of homes before attempting, too late, to eject.

A Los Angeles Times EXTRA published Aug. 7 carried a banner headline: “MAJOR BONG KILLED!” Below, in smaller type, was this: “War’s End Speeded as Powerful New Atomic Bomb Rains Death, Destruction on Japan.”

Richard Bong had asked to be buried in Poplar. The pastor who had married Marge and Dick only six months earlier helped conduct the service, which ended as a formation of P-47 Thunderbolts flew over, dipping their wings.

Marge Bong returned to Los Angeles, a 21-year-old widow, far from home, alone and depressed. “It was a very painful period. I was very shy. I had to find out who I was, what I could do.” One thing was certain: She’d need a job because “$52.10 a month [her husband’s government insurance] just didn’t go very far.”

She had done a little modeling and found work as an instructor at a modeling agency. One day, Murray Drucker, a publisher of fashion and dog magazines, came in seeking a columnist. Marge signed on and, in 1954, married Drucker. They raised two daughters. In 1956, Drucker launched his wife’s second--and continuing career--publishing the Boxer Review under the name Kris Dahl.

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Marge Bong “nearly disappeared for close to 40 years,” she says. “I never talked about Richard to my family.”

Then, in 1985, six years before Drucker died, Marge’s sister, Joyce Erickson, persuaded her to come to the dedication of the Richard Ira Bong Memorial Bridge connecting Superior and Duluth, Minn. She’d “never wanted to capitalize on the Bong name,” but this felt right.

The large Bong family began talking of a proper center in Poplar to replace the one-room museum at the Richard Ira Bong School where, since 1949, a “Marge” P-38 had sat on pylons, deteriorating in the Wisconsin winters. (The original Marge was lost over New Guinea.)

Marge Bong Drucker liked the idea that the Richard I. Bong Heritage Center would honor all the young people who went off to war in the ‘40s. She thinks it’s time for today’s young “to really get an idea of what people in that era went through.” And, she adds, “I think it’s time young people got some new heroes.”

Now that she’s emerged, it’s full-steam ahead for Marge Bong Drucker, who’s flown as far as Australia to further the cause of the Bong Memorial Fund. Her efforts, including sale of a self-published memoir of life with Bong, have raised close to $6,000 of the $2.9 million needed to create the center. The town of Poplar has given the land.

The architects envision a lighted glass hangar housing Bong medals and memorabilia, an Americana exhibit depicting rural life in the ‘40s, an audiovisual recreation of the Pearl Harbor attack and, in a Southwest Pacific jungle setting, that P-38, the “Marge,” now being restored by volunteers.

To date, donations total about $250,000. One man gave $1,000, saying Bong had saved his life. Wherever Marge Bong Drucker goes, people talk reverently about “your major.”

She laughs as she recalls a fellow who came up to her and asked in a booming voice, “Hey, is Marge Bong still alive?” “I checked my pulse and said, ‘Well, I guess she is.’ ”

* This weekly column chronicles the people and small moments that define life in Southern California. Reader suggestions are welcome.