For the next 46 years she was, her daughter said, “the complete working mom.”“My sister and I had an inkling about her other life,” Karen Drucker said, “but there was such a vibe from her [not to ask about it]. She found success as a model and later as a teacher of models. Dick Bong loved flying and the P-38 was the ideal fighting plane for the combat techniques he mastered: swooping down on his targets and blasting them at dangerously close range, then pulling up fast. R ichard Ira Bong, who would become America's "Ace of Aces," was born on September 24, 1920, the son of a Swedish immigrant. You may need to download version 2.0 now from the At that time he modeled the ideal all-American boy.Dick became enamored of flying as a small boy, watching planes fly over the farm carrying mail for President Calvin Coolidge’s summer White House in Superior. He grew up on a farm, where he frequently shot rifles and fantasized about flying. He was the oldest of nine children born to a Swedish father and Scotch-English mother, and he excelled at many things. Richard I. Bong.
She soon found herself being pursued by newsreel cameras.The pilot explained at the time that his girlfriend, a tall, dark-haired beauty, “looks swell, and a hell of a lot better than these naked women painted on most of the airplanes.”For the quiet and reserved Bong to so publicly advertise his feelings “really astonished everybody,” said Christabel Grant, executive director of the Richard I. Bong World War II Heritage Center in Superior.In late 1944, Bong earned the ace-of-aces moniker after shooting down his 40th enemy plane. Drucker did not renew ties to her past until the mid-1980s, when a Bong family member invited her to the dedication of the Richard I. Bong Memorial Bridge connecting Duluth, Minn., and … She began to accept invitations to speak at aviation and veterans conventions, where people lined up to meet her “like she was a rock star,” her daughter recalled.Some years ago she was delighted to learn that a P-38 model plane kit complete with a sticker bearing her likeness had become a collector’s item.She eventually devoted herself to building what became the Richard I. Bong World War II Heritage Center. She left The Times in 2015.Joe Kelly released the months of pent-up rage the Dodgers and their fans have been feeling ever since MLB found the Houston Astros cheated in 2017.A magnitude 4.2 earthquake centered near San Fernando struck at 4:29 a.m., followed by a 3.3 quake at 4:38 and a 3.8 quake at 6:48.Assemblyman Phil Ting said there is support for providing up to $600 weekly to jobless Californians President Trump, trailing Joe Biden in the polls, suggests delaying the November election. She also leaves a brother, William Vattendahl of Longville, Minn.In 1956, Drucker became the publisher of one of her husband’s magazines, the Boxer Review.