Hollywood, Hijacking, and the Space Race: Stories from Grandpa Floyd
As I began to draft this essay, I realized very quickly that my words were not quite enough to bring these stories to life. I came to the conclusion that even though I had been hearing their retellings for years prior, it was necessary for me to revisit the childlike wonder I was filled with so frequently growing up when I spent so many weekends sitting on the floor of my grandfather’s office - eyes fluttering across the walls of photos as I begged to hear the same story for the tenth time. My grandfather, Floyd, is still the same person he was in his youth. I think it is a misconception that the 21st century has represented far too often--that the elderly have lost a sense for themselves or for their pasts. Even though he is well in age, and may not always give the most congruent reports of the same plots that once flowed with ease--the years highlight what has stuck as the most important. This essay inspired me to sit down with him and record his telling of these stories once more. That way I can have and share them forever.
Floyd Kloepfer was born on September 26th, 1931 in a small town in Idaho called Rupert. This last summer, on a road trip to Utah, my family and I stopped in Rupert, circling its old farmland roads to find the house he grew up in--and we did. A small, red brick building on the corner was home to 9 Kloepfer children, my grandfather being the youngest of them all. He grew up with horses and open roads and massive, glittering skies to blanket his youth. He worked at the local movie theatre as a projectionist in his teenage years--the spark to his future in tech. He loves to tell the stories of having to walk home at night down the barren roads after the last movie had closed, and how his mother loved to come to the Tuesday shows. I know so much about his youth that I feel like I was there at times myself. This strikes me as so fascinating because even after all he has experienced, he talks the most frequently of Rupert, and his mother Rachel, my namesake. He loved her so, and sometimes, when he says my name, I know that in his age, he is thinking of her. He has never forgotten where he came from - it has kept him humble and compassionate through every trial I have witnessed him bear.
My grandfather eventually left Idaho in the ‘50s for California. Tinseltown was gaining an electronics specialist of the finest degree and of the highest rapport. Floyd has never been the kind of man to be corrupted by the glitz and fame of Hollywood, and as he started to make his way into the industry, he never lost his homegrowness. He worked predominantly on the Lawrence Welk Show, which began airing in 1955. A musical variety spectacle, The Lawrence Welk Show is a wonderful symbol of Hollywood at the time as a conglomerate: Colorful, artistic, and full of frill and show tunes. My grandfather was in charge of a variety of technical tasks, running the cameras, sound, and cables (a real pacific northwesterner in this career sense). He even befriended Adam West--or by better known name--Batman. West was one of the first on-screen actors to ever portray Batman and did so all through the ’60s. My grandfather often noted this real-life cast of characters as colorful, a real change from where he grew up. I try to imagine being a young adult from what was frankly the middle of nowhere and growing to reach such a glamorous environment in my career. His humble heart never hardened at the temptations of the ego in such a vibrant city, and he has remained this way since: kindly, and down to earth.
After meeting my Nana, who was a nurse in California at the time, and moving back to Washington State post-parentage, my grandfather worked in an electronics department for Boeing. During this time, when tensions hung thick between the United States and The Soviet Union, my grandfather was busy working on the famous Apollo Spacecrafts. Apollo 1, unfortunately, resulted in the passing of three astronauts that my grandfather worked with. He recalls the day where during a pretest flight, a fire overcame these cosmic pioneers. This event consumed headlines but did not stop the U.S. from continuing its space journey, and my grandfather worked on all of the Apollo crafts for many years. He dealt with many high classification missions in the Nevada desert, even visiting the infamous Homey Airport, also known as Area 51, to exercise his electronics specialty to photograph tests and work being done in aeronautics.
His favorite story is one he told at least four times over while we sat and revisited his past. While at Boeing, the unit my grandfather was officially a part of was the Instrumentations unit. One of the assignments he got was to crawl into the attic of a building to install a mic in the ceiling because conversations were happening that his unit in Boeing had an interest in listening in on. However, as my grandfather climbed into this attic, on what was more or less a secret mission, he ran right into another Boeing employee, who he immediately recognized as a member of the Productions unit. This employee had historically been a competitor of his, as their units were commonly trying to reach similar goals. So there he was, engaging in a high stakes assignment involving heavy subject matter, running into his opposer trying to accomplish the same thing--but they both erupted in laughter, together in the attic, as they mic’d it up together.
My grandfather's experiences with infamous conspiracies and the aeronautics industry did not end with his time in Boeing, however. At the dawn of a new decade, my favorite of his stories comes into fruition. On November 24th, 1971, aboard Northwest Orient Flight 305, a man under the name of D.B. Cooper handed a flight attendant a note that explained that he had a bomb concealed within his suitcase and demanded $200,000 in cash and two parachutes in exchange for not detonating the plane and its passengers. The following passage, from Skyjack by Geoffrey Gray, best lays the foundation for my grandfather’s presence in the story:
“The jet banks and climbs. In first-class, passenger Floyd Kloepfer, an electronics specialist, pushes his nose against the window and looks down at the Columbia River. Explorers Lewis and Clark paddled through here in canoes… Kloepfer now watches the Columbia shrink into a stream. He looks at the dark clouds and worries about the weather. Tonight he and his wife are driving to her folks’ place across the border in Canada. In the slushy rain, it will be a long drive in his Convertible Plymouth Fury. Some Thanksgiving, he thinks. The passenger next to him is drunk. The guy’s been drinking whiskey since South Dakota. Kloepfer looks over the seat behind him and finds the sergeant he was talking to earlier. The sergeant is in uniform. He is coming home from Vietnam…”
My grandfather just so happened to be one of the first-class passengers on board at the time of this hijacking. My grandfather told us this story dozens of times, always at our request. At the Sea-Tac Airport, the passengers were released from the plane. My grandfather's cousin was an FBI agent at the time and was there to meet the passengers that, unbeknownst to them until their exit, had been aboard a plane with one of the greatest American mysteries of all time. My grandfather tells this part of the story in adrenaline-rushed fragments--how he and all of the other passengers were rushed into individual security rooms, along with an FBI agent each, to give witness testimonies and undergo questioning. Grandpa Floyd recalled to the FBI agent that Cooper had olive-toned skin and piercing brown eyes--a description that would eventually be paralleled dozens of times by crew, and known infamously by the American public. Meanwhile, the crew had remained on the plane and went back into the air, accompanied by Cooper’s requested money and chutes. In the air, he told the crew to all gather in the cockpit and leave him alone in the passenger hold of the plane. At about 8 pm that night, Cooper opened the aft door and jumped--accompanied by the $200,000, the parachutes, and the bomb he carried in his briefcase.
Cooper has never been found. We all revel in theories still, of course, marveling at the experience it must have been for my Grandfather to have been in such close contact with such a classic case. I loved this story the most, and so, for Christmas of 2013, my grandfather gifted me Skyjack, with the encryption inside that reads: Dearest Rachel, I am giving you this story, to help you always remember your grandpa.
While my grandfather is indeed, all of the things that can be displayed in his stories--brave, hard-working, innovative, and unique in all that he did; he is more of a family man than anything else. He has lived through, been part of, and experienced some of the most intense events and iconic scenes in modern-day American history. However, he has always presented himself as a father and a grandfather first. Above all else, he is sensitive and loving at heart. He has taught me discipline, spontaneity, and courage through all of his electrically woven tales, and I knew they needed to be shared and preserved. His stories have created a whole world for me to look back on, and to always remember him by.