Hello again from Luquillo, Today is December 8, 2025

Here is an old memory that I had fun remembering. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

NORMA JEAN AND THE PIPER CUB

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, my father’s friend and fellow English actor, Reginald Denny, had a hobby shop in Hollywood. (Click links for photos and info.) Its main focus was radio-control model aircraft, but after the start of World War II, the shop shifted to producing radio-controlled planes for the Army—targets used for training anti-aircraft and air-to-air gunnery crews.

In the summer of 1944, when I was nine years old, Dad—well aware of my obsession with anything that flew—took me to visit Mr. Denny’s shop one Saturday afternoon. Before the two men settled into conversation, Mr. Denny stepped to the door of his office and called for one of his assemblers. A moment later a young woman appeared, and my world shifted a little.

She was blond, blue-eyed, and radiant in a way I didn’t yet have words for. “Norma Jean,” Mr. Denny said, “would you take young master Mowbray on a tour of the shop?”

She smiled down at me and said, “C’mon, young man, let me show you around. I’m Norma Jean Mortenson. What’s your name?”

“Alan Mowbray Jr.,” I announced, then added, hoping to sound older than nine, “but you can call me Butch.” I even tried dropping my voice into a baritone, though I doubt I fooled anyone.

There was something subtly different about her from the girls in my fifth-grade Catholic school—my then-“enamorata” Kathleen Lang, disappeared the moment Norma Jean rested an arm lightly around my shoulder and guided me into the factory.

The workshop was a single vast room alive with the scents of the model aviation world: airplane glue, sawdust, and fabric dope. To a devoted model-airplane enthusiast, it was intoxicating. Fuselages and wings of all sizes filled the space, each in some stage of construction. Norma Jean showed me how they were assembled, bending now and then to my eye level, taking my questions seriously in a way that thrilled me.

When we reached the end of the tour, she leaned in with a conspiratorial grin. “C’mon,” she said, “let’s go in the back. I have a surprise for you.”

In a rear room stood several retired radio-controlled aircraft—big, dignified veterans of Army training flights, their motors and radios removed. To me they looked like giants at rest.

“Take your pick,” she said.

“Really?” I stared at her, then at the lineup, before pointing to a cherry-red Piper Cub model. It seemed enormous: a five-foot fuselage, wings at least six feet across.

“That one,” I said.

“Sure,” she replied. “Let’s go out to your car and see if it fits.”

Together we maneuvered my new prize out onto Hollywood Boulevard. Our 1942 Oldsmobile blessed us with a cavernous trunk; by removing the wings, we managed to settle the fuselage beside the spare tire. The lid wouldn’t close, but a length of twine secured it well enough. My Piper Cub—my Piper Cub—was coming home.

Back in the office, we announced our success. Norma Jean turned to me, smiling that warm, luminous smile, and said, “It was great meeting you, Butch. Come back soon.” Then, before I could brace myself, she slipped an arm around my shoulders and planted a wet kiss squarely on my cheek.

I stood there, struck dumb. Whatever I mumbled in response is lost even to memory, and before I could gather myself, she was gone.

I didn’t know then what the world would one day know—that Norma Jean Mortenson would become Marilyn Monroe. To me, she was simply the beautiful young woman who treated a nine-year-old boy with kindness, gave him a Piper Cub, and left him dazed on a Saturday afternoon in the summer of 1944.