403 Forbidden 403 Forbidden Code: AccessDenied

Message: Access Denied

RequestId: B45D9E65B5A67E9C

HostId: 2/QLrbCzKHWEyQu5OCU/uAX0C0nvE1+11a93Y76NXytMU7CiUXwE4ybE56taa0p7GaqJ87ZIV+g= An Error Occurred While Attempting to Retrieve a Custom Error Document Code: AccessDenied

Message: Access Denied

In a town made up of characters, perhaps none has stood taller than one of the smallest.

Anyone from Phillipsburg in their 50s or older will remember Mace Bugen, a dwarf whose successful insurance and real estate business was overshadowed by his boundless quest for publicity.

Bugen, who stood 43 inches high and died at age 67 in 1982, was a pillar in the Easton-area Jewish community and a superfan of Lafayette College and Phillipsburg High School athletics.

His hobby was collecting photographs of himself with famous people of the day.

The photos dating to the 1950s through 1970s make up the bulk of a new 89-page book that celebrates Bugen's life and spirit and portrays him as a man determined to make a splash despite his disabilities.

"The Little Gate-Crasher: The Life and Photos of Mace Bugen" is written by his great-niece, Philadelphia-area author Gabrielle Kaplan-Mayer. Published by The Sager Group, the book caps a two-year project to memorialize Bugen, whose family legend has only grown in the 30-plus years since his death.

Using a combination of cunning and chutzpah, Bugen amassed a collection of black-and-white photo prints that he proudly displayed on a bulletin board in his Warren Street office. Following his retirement, they were placed into albums and stored with his sister, Minerva Auerbach, a substitute teacher at Easton High School who was Kaplan-Mayer's grandmother.

'His way of standing out'

Bugen took tremendous pride in the photos, and often went to great lengths to put himself in position to get them.

"It was kind of his way of standing out," said Kaplan-Mayer, who lives in Elkins Park, Pa., and was 11 when Bugen died. "Being a dwarf, he spent his whole life with people staring at him. It was kind of his way of showing if you're going to look at me, I'm going to give you something to look at besides my height.

"I think he got so many of the photos because he had a way of making things happen. He wouldn't take no for an answer. He just had that attitude like, I don't care if they say no. I'm going to go back and do it. He was set apart because of his height and I think he used that to his advantage. He didn't let any of his challenges stop him."

Hollywood stars. Athletes. Politicians and musicians. Bugen met hundreds of them, usually thrusting himself into their personal space and having someone -- anyone -- use his camera to snap an image.

As a result the quality usually wasn't the greatest because, as the book notes, the photos were typically "taken by a stranger in a rush."

A number of the photos with political figures were taken after Bugen had worked his way into news conferences, impersonating a reporter "for a paper in Jersey."

The book describes him as the master of the celebrity selfie and first photobomber: "In nearly all the photos, there is a somewhat wild look in Mace's eyes. The celebrities tend to look a little bit stunned."

How it started

Bugen was still at Phillipsburg High School when in 1934 he begged his older brother Phil to put him on a bus so he could trek to Chicago for boxer Joe Louis' first professional fight. When he got there, Bugen entered the arena without a ticket, confidently walked past the ushers and made his way right up to the ring.

Incredibly, the 19-year-old in knickers climbed through the ropes, hurried to Louis in his corner and pumped his gloved hand.

"I'm Mace Bugen. I wanna wish ya some Jewish luck," he said.

Replied Louis, who would become heavyweight champion and one of the greatest sports heroes of the 20th century: "Man, I can use a little luck."

Bugen's trespass into the ring made newsreels and launched him as a celebrity back home along the Delaware River. After the fight, Bugen posed for pictures with the young pugilist in his dressing room. Louis became Bugen's first celebrity acquaintance and the odd pair became friends.

Sixteen years later, Bugen would crash the ring again at Yankee Stadium as Louis fought Ezzard Charles, in 1950. You can find footage on YouTube in the first two minutes of the broadcast.

The unusual book project was spurred by Kaplan-Mayer's mother, Lynn Auerbach-Kaplan, who wanted to preserve the aging photos she inherited and share her uncle's story.

"He was so unique," said Auerbach-Kaplan, 75, who grew up on College Hill in Easton and now lives in Duncansville, Pa. "He just loved publicity and I think he deserved it. He felt like, 'I can't play basketball. I can't play football. But I can still get in the news.'



"I remember his determination and his fearlessness," she said. "He did get away with a few things. He took liberties because of his dwarfism."

Kaplan-Mayer hopes local bookstores will carry volumes of the book, but for now, it is available on Amazon.com for $15.95 and through Kaplan-Mayer's website.

A prominent figure

Bugen was 20 when he graduated from Phillipsburg High School in 1935. In 1946 he led a failed campaign for town council with the slogan "I'm for the little guy."

By then, he was well on his way to a successful and lucrative career developing and selling real estate in Phillipsburg and Easton. He drove a trademark customized Jeep and also was a notary who sold insurance -- a one-stop shop before such conveniences were commonplace.

'The Little Gate-Crasher: The Life and Photos of Mace Bugen," is available at Amazon.com. (Courtesy photo)

Bugen was an observant Jew who belonged to B'nai Abraham synagogue in Wilson Borough. He supported numerous Jewish charities, mentored youth and was a fixture at the old Jewish Community Center in Easton.

On the occasion of teens' bar and bat mitzvahs, it was customary in Easton to receive from Bugen a discount coupon for an Israeli bond, said Peter Cooper, who recalls being horrified the first time he ever saw Bugen when he was at the JCC nursery school.

"We had free play and in walks this person that's my size but you can tell is a full-grown adult," said Cooper, 57. "I was freaked out -- scared to death."

Cooper, now the owner of Lexus of Lehigh Valley, said Bugen became one of the most influential people in his lifetime.

"Telling the stories I just can't help but smile and laugh about it," said Cooper, of Easton. "Every time you went with Mace it was an adventure."

Instant access

Cooper said it wasn't Bugen's size that set him apart. It was his cojones.

Bugen would take youth groups to ballgames and Broadway shows. Cooper remembers Bugen piling boys into a bus to see a 76ers-Knicks game at the old Spectrum in Philadelphia.

Walt Frazier played for the Knicks, and a couple of years earlier in his book "Clyde" he mentioned a game in Philadelphia in which a dwarf ran onto the court and kicked a referee in protest of a call. That was Bugen.

Before the game, Bugen led the boys to the Knicks locker room as he carried a copy of Frazier's book. The men had never met.

"I'm here to see Mr. Frazier. He's expecting me," Bugen told an attendant. The locker room guard wasn't buying it.

"Look, here's his book," Bugen said. "He wrote about me and he was unauthorized to write about me."

When the attendant didn't budge, Bugen took a fit.

Mace Bugen in his Jeep. The first Jeep he had was customized by an engineer at Ingersoll Rand in Phillipsburg, according to the book. (Photo courtesy of The Sager Group)

"Either you're going to let me in with these boys from the children's home, or I'm going to sue Walt Frazier and I'm going to sue you," Bugen demanded.

The Lehigh Valley group got in and met the future Hall of Famer.

"There wasn't anybody that if we said to Mace we want to meet somebody, he wouldn't figure out a way to make it happen," Cooper said. "We were always orphans from the children's home."

Take Muhammad Ali, for example.

On a whim, Bugen took a bunch of kids on an hourlong drive from the Lehigh Valley to Schuylkill County, Pa., in hopes of finding the boxing great's camp at Deer Lake. When they finally arrived, Bugen marched up to a man stationed outside.

Bugen had met Ali and gotten in a picture with him months earlier when the fighter made an appearance at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, during the time he was stripped of his title for draft evasion.

Cooper recalls Bugen speaking to the camp attendant, determination and entitlement in his voice.

"We're here to see Ali," he told the man.

"He's resting now," was the reply.

Cooper tells the rest of the story: "Mace says, 'Well wake him up! I brought these kids all the way from the children's home in Easton and I brought them just to see him.'

"Five minutes later, we're in Ali's cabin."

Ali remembered Bugen from Muhlenberg, invited the group to stay at camp and later that day they watched as Ali sparred with a young Larry Holmes, the Easton fighter who would later become heavyweight champion himself.

"It went on and on," Cooper said. "It just didn't end. And I got so much from Mace. He wasn't afraid to do or try anything. He would just go for it. He was one of a kind. I was so very fortunate to have known him."

Groucho says no

While the book recaptures moments lost in time, it isn't all glowing tribute.

Kaplan-Mayer recounts Bugen's humiliation when he dates a dwarf and becomes an even greater object of finger-pointing and laughter, vowing never again to subject himself to that.

She also touches on his dalliances with the prostitutes of Easton and Phillipsburg.

"If I wanted somethin', I'd spend 10 dollars," she quotes him as saying.

Kaplan-Mayer said it was important that the book be honest and wade into uncomfortable facets of Bugen's life beyond his family. The passage of time helped to achieve that, she said.

"I felt like we have some distance and perspective; I felt like there shouldn't be any shame about that," she said. "At the time Mace was living, he had no option.

Bugen as a 15-year-old in his parents' corner store in Phillipsburg in 1930. (Photo courtesy of The Sager Group)

"For my grandmother, that was embarrassing. She never wanted to hear about Mace going to a prostitute, but Mace shared about that. It was kind of just a matter of acceptance. He said, 'I'm a human being. I have needs.' And there was no shame."

Not everyone welcomed Bugen's direct, bulldog style. Groucho Marx was the one that got away. He refused when Bugen tried for a picture, according to Kaplan-Mayer.

Another of the little man's most prized photos is missing. It's him with Hollywood starlet Marilyn Monroe. It's not in the book or the old albums his family kept.

"We think when he was older he gave it away to someone," Kaplan-Mayer said. "We can't find it."

The author's favorite photo is one with President Richard M. Nixon, taken in his first year in office in 1969.

She treasures it because it captures so much about Bugen's knack for getting what he wanted. It shows tiny Bugen behind a cordoned area, shaking hands with a bowed president surrounded by his stunned presidential detail.

"He would go to a press conference carrying his camera and say 'I need a press badge' and people would not say no to him," Kaplan-Mayer said. "That's how he got the picture with Nixon. The Secret Service guys are looking around like, 'We messed up,' kind of shocked, and there's Nixon bending down to have that moment with him.

"He knew how to talk to people to get what he wanted. He was such a go-getter."

Jim Deegan may be reached at jdeegan@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @jim_deegan. Find lehighvalleylive on Facebook.