Roger Herman
Zierenberg, Sr.

Roger Herman Zierenberg, Sr. was born on November 26, 1921, in the mansion house at Evergreen Cemetery in East Los Angeles — his father Herman was the superintendent. His older sister Hermine Elizabeth and brother Norman Eric had both died as infants. Roger himself nearly died from severe lactose intolerance, surviving only after his mother Ruth discovered that goat's milk overcame the problem.

His younger brothers George Jackson (born April 28, 1923) and Richard Dudley (born April 20, 1926) completed the Zierenberg boys.

Life at Evergreen was unusual and free. The brothers ran through blue-bells and California poppies, played over the manure pit on planks, sailed boats in the carpenter shop, and ate strudel from the old German carpenter's kitchen. Christmas brought an extraordinary gift: Roger Sr. received a convertible pedal car with lights, a wind-up motor sound, and a horn. He was, he recalled, "the rich kid of the area."

At age 5, the family moved to Glendale — their house smaller than the cemetery mansion, but a wonderful playground. Cowboys and Indians, a pole vault and high jump pit, model airplanes, rubber-band guns, raided fruit trees, and constant competition with his brothers defined those years. Roger Sr. learned to swim when his father abandoned him in the deep end of the Fremont Park pool and shouted encouragement from the edge. He made it. Then he went straight to the diving board.

His father Herman invested in a La Vida Water Company franchise and delivered bottled water — including to the then-famous Walt Disney. The family took Saturday trips to Santa Monica and Huntington Beach on the "Big Red Cars" streetcars, with picnic lunches packed in a wicker basket and a gallon of lemonade in a thermos.

Roger Sr. developed a paper route, then a lawn-mowing business. He mowed for 25 cents, simonized a Model A for 75 cents (waxing every spoke), and saved for a bicycle — which was promptly stolen from the school rack. He discovered hot rods. He discovered trumpet. He never fully recovered from either.

At John Muir Grammar School he excelled in chinning, standing broad jump, and swinging rings — but couldn't throw a baseball through a rectangular frame to earn his medal. He remembered the lesson: "No matter how well many things are done, one lapse can cause a loss of the ultimate goal."

In 1937, his Junior year, the family moved to Norwalk when Herman was appointed superintendent of a cemetery there. Roger Sr. sometimes dug graves before getting on the school bus. He became first trumpet out of 17 trumpets and student leader in the Whittier High School band, and was listed in the school annual as "Music Maker." He graduated in 1939, playing a trumpet solo at the ceremony.

The trumpet story runs through Roger Sr.'s entire early life. It started when he borrowed a friend's bugle and discovered he could immediately play it — bugle calls, by ear, with no training. His neighbors were not entirely pleased.

He desperately wanted a trumpet. The school instrument program gave him a cello. Oom-pah-pah for a year. Then a French Horn. Oom-pah-pah again. His father brought home a ruined, sticky-valved cornet someone had discarded. Too far gone to play.

His best friend Bobby Bedford was an excellent trumpet player, and Roger Sr. hung around him partly out of admiration, partly out of envy. One assembly, a fellow student played "On the Road to Mandalay" and gave Roger Sr. goosebumps he never forgot.

The breakthrough came when his mother lost her car keys and in desperation promised: "Roger, if you find those keys, I'll buy you a trumpet!" He found the keys. She kept her promise. A brand new $35.00 Regent trumpet — which he still had decades later, though it had been redone three times, polished so thin it had exceptional tone.

He played trumpet by ear. No sheet music. He heard a melody and he played it. He became first trumpet in a 60-piece band. He played a solo at graduation. And after the war, back home with Juanita and his children, the trumpet still filled the house.

That trumpet rests today in his shadow box alongside his combat medals and pilot wings. That placement was not accidental.

Roger Sr. entered military aviation training in 1943. When the questionnaire asked what type of aircraft he hoped to fly, he wrote: "Something hot and fast." Only four cadets answered that way. The military gave it to him.

He trained on the P-40 before transitioning to the P-51 Mustang. He arrived at San Severo, Italy with four other pilots. He was the first to fly the P-51, and it fit him, he said, "like an old shoe." His squadron called him Roger the Rock — in practice dogfights, no one had ever beaten him.

He named his P-51 Bad Penny II. The old saying: a bad penny always comes back. He went out 60 times. He came back 60 times.

His combat record included his first aerial victory on July 25, 1944 — a Junkers Ju 52 transport shot down during a shuttle mission to Russia. His second came over Avignon, France, on August 2, 1944 — a Messerschmitt Me 109. On October 16, 1944, he shot down two more Me 109s in a single engagement. For that mission, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. He also received the Silver Star.

He flew through the Ploesti raids — among the most dangerous missions of the entire war — and took flak through his wingtip on his sixth mission. He survived an engine failure on takeoff that resulted in a belly landing; he rolled off the end of the runway into dust and sage brush. His first thought afterward was that he'd missed his chance to bail out, and he wondered what it would have felt like. That was Roger Sr.

During the war, Juanita drove their daughter Bethy — five months old — from Waco, Texas to his base on Christmas Day. The car horn played "Mary Had a Little Lamb." Roger Sr. ran downstairs and was confronted by a cranky infant who had been traveling all day. He wrote it all down in his memoir, Woodbine Five-Nine — the car, the baby, the smell, the kindness of a stranger who offered her home to a young mother thanking her so many times Roger Sr. had to take Juanita by the arm and lead her away.

Roger Sr. came home from the war and built a life — which may be one of the most important parts of his story. He did not remain only a fighter pilot in a photograph. He became a husband, father, businessman, teacher, and grandfather.

He worked as a draftsman — his skill in mechanical drawing, noticed back at the Zurn Manufacturing Company in Erie, had not left him. He later became a manufacturer representative and entrepreneur, with the same confidence and drive that had served him in the cockpit.

He coached. He taught. He restored cars. He competed in stock car racing. He dove competitively. He told stories. His children marveled that he seemed able to do anything.

His son Roger Jr. remembered: "Dad was our hero, but he never seemed to overdo his characterization of being that to us. We just marveled at his bravery, his courage, and his ability to remain composed in the face of difficult circumstances and challenges. These were traits to be respected, and to be emulated."

He began writing a memoir he called Woodbine Five-Nine — his radio call sign in the skies over Italy and Germany. Thirty pages survive, vivid and honest and funny, written in first person under the pen name "Herman Belmont." He never finished it. But what exists is irreplaceable: the closest anyone will come to sitting in the cockpit of Bad Penny II with Roger Sr. himself.

In 1995, he attended the 309th Squadron reunion in Dayton, Ohio. A fellow veteran wrote about him in the August 1997 issue of Memories: The Flight Community Forum. Roger Sr.'s P-51 was on the cover — an air-to-air photograph taken during a live combat mission in 1944 by a fellow pilot who was right there with him.

Roger Herman Zierenberg, Sr. died in 2014. He left behind a family whose members are still telling his story.

Ernst Erich Hermann Zierenberg was born on November 26, 1882 in Gevelsberg, Westphalia, Germany — the same birthdate as his son Roger, born exactly 39 years later. He died October 27, 1947 in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Herman's life reads like a novel. At 17, he joined the German Navy and endured notoriously cruel military discipline. This climaxed in a German port where he jumped ship onto an outgoing tramp steamer. He claimed to have sailed around the world seven times, never returning to Germany.

He boxed in South America — in Panama and elsewhere — using the name "Kid Belmont" or "The Dutch Kid." The name Zierenberg was difficult for Panamanian fans to say, so he took the French version: Belle Mont — beautiful mountain. He was beaten badly by a large Canadian, suffered a broken nose he carried the rest of his life, and quit boxing.

While in South America he contracted a terrible fever after a fight, curled up in a roadside ditch, and lay there "like a sick dog" for several days before recovering. He eventually made his way to New York City, where he became a swimming and language instructor at the YMCA, speaking six languages.

He traveled west by train, became severely ill, and got off in Northeast, Pennsylvania — only a few miles from where Ruth Ricart lived. They met, fell in love, and married despite her family's objections (the war with Germany was still fresh in everyone's memory). They opened a candy store in Jamestown, New York. They worked in a cemetery there. Then they moved to Southern California, first to a prefabricated house on 40 acres in the Mojave Desert, then to Evergreen Cemetery in East Los Angeles when Herman was hired as superintendent.

Herman was, by Roger Sr.'s account, extremely generous — "he would give you the shirt off his back." He was a gifted singer who studied under noted instructor Paul Reimers. He was acquainted with Hugh Friedhofer, who later composed the score for The Ten Commandments. He taught Roger Sr. to swim by abandoning him in the deep end and shouting instructions from the poolside.

He also struggled with alcohol, which eventually cost him the Evergreen position and led to years of absence from the family. Roger Sr. recorded all of this honestly in his personal history — the man's extraordinary qualities alongside his failures, with the fairness of a son who understood both.

Roger Sr. began writing a memoir after the war. He titled it Woodbine Five-Nine — his radio call sign in the skies over Italy and Germany. He wrote it in first person under the pen name "Herman Belmont," with his protagonist called "Roger Revelle." But the details are too specific, too personal, and too true to be anything other than autobiography.

Thirty pages survive across four chapters. The manuscript was never finished. Chapter Four ends mid-sentence.

What exists is remarkable. Chapter One opens not with combat, but with Roger Sr. stalking a chicken through an abandoned Italian monastery, cornering it with his jacket, putting it in a cage, and announcing: "You, little friend, won't look so haughty when you're belly-up on the mess table." They ate it by Zippo lighter when the generator went out. It was great.

Chapter Two includes the story of Juanita driving baby Bethy to his base on Christmas Day, the Plymouth horn playing "Mary Had a Little Lamb," the cranky infant, no room to stay, and the kindness of a stranger named Mrs. Babson who called Travellers Aid to offer her home.

Chapter Three describes a genuine, deadly aerial feud between American P-51 and P-38 pilots that killed at least four men — a story no official record would likely preserve.

Chapter Four is the most purely military — escorting bombers into Munich with 600 German anti-aircraft guns waiting, watching two bombers become fireballs, writing: "I hope they all get out. No chutes. That one blew too hard."

The manuscript ends with Roger Sr.'s mind drifting from the Munich flak to his courtship with Juanita, then outlining what the final chapters were meant to cover: the eleven-left fight, Lt. Harwood on his wing, the missing engine, being listed as Missing in Action, and taking a drink of whiskey at the end. He never wrote those chapters.

But thirty pages exist, typed in his hand, preserved by his family. They are the closest anyone will ever come to sitting in the cockpit of Bad Penny II with Roger Sr.