LONGMONT, COLORADO — The windows shook when dynamite exploded on a plane over Conrad Hope’s family ranch in northern Colorado 70 years ago.
Hope, then 18, saw a ball of fire streaking across the night sky and rushed with his brother toward where the burning wreckage fell, dodging objects that turned out to be the bodies of victims of the first confirmed case of sabotage against an American commercial airliner.
Hundreds of miles away, Marianne Poppelmeier’s pregnant mother, was at home in Pennsylvania when she learned that her husband was among the 44 people killed in the bombing. Poebelmeier said she ran upstairs and held her eldest daughter tight and screamed, recounting a story her mother had told shortly before her death.
Hope and Poppelmeier, who recently forged a friendship out of shared trauma, plan to be together at the first memorial to those who died on Saturday, the 70th anniversary of the bombing.
Until now, the fate of the victims has been overshadowed by the dramatic details of the bombing, the glaring absence of a federal law against attacking an aircraft, and a thorough investigation into what happened.
“We have gone 70 years without having any respect at all for the victims who lost their lives,” Hope said. “So it’s really good to have that attention now.”
The United Airlines flight took off a few minutes late after a stop in Denver on its way to Portland. Oregon. Most of the passengers were from elsewhere, said Michael Hesse, president of the Denver Police Museum, who led the effort to create a memorial in the air traffic control tower at the city’s former airport, which is now part of a liquor bar.
Hess suggested that this is part of the reason why a memorial had never been built before. The granite slab bearing the names of the victims listed on the plane’s outline will also include the seals of local and federal law enforcement agencies that responded to the bombing.
Work is also underway on a separate memorial at the crash site, where homes are now being built.
The explosion, which was a wake-up call to the danger facing the emerging aviation industry, was not terrorism but the result of a personal grudge. Jack Gilbert Graham admitted to putting 25 sticks of dynamite attached to a timer in the suitcase of his mother, who placed him in an orphanage when he was a boy. Historian Jeremy Morton, who developed it, said Exhibition about bombing At the Colorado History Center.
Morton said Graham planned to cover his tracks by having the plane explode over the mountains in Wyoming, making it difficult to investigate the incident. But a flight delay caused the plane to explode over beet fields north of the city, allowing investigators to collect the wreckage and interview witnesses.
At the time, federal law prohibited attacks on trains and ships but not airplanes, which led to Graham being quickly tried in state court on one count of premeditated murder for the killing of his mother, Daisy King. None of the other people who died were named as victims.
Congress banned attacks on aircraft shortly after Graham’s conviction. Graham, who was married with two children, was executed in January 1957.
FBI records Graham may not have been the first plane saboteur: High explosives are strongly suspected in the 1933 crash of a United airliner over Indiana that killed seven people, but experts speculate it may have been caused by an explosion of gas fumes.
The FBI said its investigation into the Colorado crash provides a model to guide future complex investigations of airlines, including the terrorist bombing of a Pan Am jumbo jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. That attack, using a bomb hidden in a recording device packed inside a checked bag, led to enhanced baggage screening procedures, said Jeff Davis, a senior fellow at the Eno Transportation Center.
After the bombing, Hope joined his family and his girlfriend—who later became his wife—to help find the bodies and protect them from looters so that others could transport them to a makeshift morgue. Hope’s father later breaks down as he recounts what happened, and the family reaches an unspoken agreement not to discuss the bombing. For years, Hope said he would wake up having bad dreams about dead bodies.
Buebelmeier was 42 when she first heard the story of her mother’s reaction to her father’s death. She said her mother’s second husband was jealous and forbade anyone from talking about the father of her namesake, Marion Pierce Hopgood, while she was growing up. An intense period of emotional and spiritual healing after a series of hardships as an adult led her to want to know more about her father and she eventually published a book, Finding My Father, in 2019 about her quest.
She considered reaching out to Hope, who was believed to be one of the few remaining volunteers who helped recover the bodies, but was hesitant because she did not want to force him back then. But she decided to contact him in 2022 after someone told her the crash site was under development.
After meeting Poppelmeier and hearing her story, Hope said his focus began to shift from those who died to those left behind and still suffering because of the bombing. He called Poeppelmeyer “a blessing.”
“There’s just a bond there, a beautiful bond because we have this common story, two sides of the coin,” she said.
And each time they talked, Poeppelmeier says Hope would share more information about what happened. I recently learned that most of the bodies were found on the Hope family farm, including one close to their home.
She knows there are hundreds of people who helped after the accident. But she thinks it’s possible that Hope was the one who found her father after the accident.
“I’d just like to think he might have done it,” she said.