DENVER (KDVR) – Now showing onColorado historyIn downtown Denver there is an exhibit highlighting the bombing of United Flight 629, and the stories of the 44 who died that night 70 years ago.
“The victims of United Flight 629 were not just names on a list, as they often appear,” said Jeremy Morton, exhibit developer and historian at History Colorado. “They were human beings with complex lives, dreams and struggles.”
Morton collected memorabilia and artifacts that show the ripples of devastation after the plane exploded moments after takeoff from Denver’s Stapleton Airport on November 1, 1955.
“The artifact that sticks out in my mind the most is a jacket that one of the victim’s wives, Marion Hopgood, sewed together. His wife took his wedding suit jacket and sewed it into a smaller jacket for his two daughters. I think that poignantly expresses the intense grief that someone goes through when there’s a tragedy like this, and in order to deal with it, she would take something that he was wearing that belonged to her and then pass it on to give her daughter something that was hers,” Morton told FOX31. “My father, even though he’s gone.”
Also on display at the museum is a real piece of a Douglas DC-6B plane that fell from the sky.
“And the part we have of the plane is from the baggage area,” said Michael Hisey, head of the Denver Police Museum. “It shows where the explosion occurred.”
John Jack Gilbert Graham had placed in his mother’s luggage a bundle of dynamite and a timer that exploded moments after the flight left Denver’s Stapleton Airport, killing 44 people.
“The idea that someone would do something like this is just mind-boggling,” Morton said. “And then you add the fact that the goal is, you know, to kill your mother, and it’s just a horrific story that’s hard to comprehend.”
The show is less about this mass murderer and more about those he killed.
“I first learned about this (tragedy) in 1982 when I was in high school. My dad was a cop, and we went to Washington, we went to the FBI museum, and the first display on the right was this,” Hesse said.
Hesse has made it his mission to give the victims of United Flight 629 the recognition they deserve over the past 70 years.
“You know, you see pictures of the victims and it’s sad. But when you start hearing their individual stories and meet their families, you kind of become emotionally connected to them,” Hessey said.
Working with volunteers, he researched the family trees of each of the victims and reached out to their loved ones, inviting them to Denver to dedicate the first-ever memorial to those killed near the control tower at Stapleton Airport. the The dedication ceremony will be held at Saturday morning.
“The official memorial will be in the shape of the plane’s fuselage and will face toward the northwest, just as the plane was,” Hesse said.
The legacy of Flight 629 is too great to fit inside a museum display case. This was the first case ever of sabotage against a domestic airliner, and it changed everything about crime investigation and airport security.
“The legacy of United 629 is the tightening of security on airlines in the wake of the bombing,” Morton said. “They will have more stringent restrictions in terms of baggage screening, passenger screening, what they bring, what people are allowed to bring, etc.”
It changed the way the media covers high-profile cases in courtrooms across the country.
“The Colorado Supreme Court made this ruling, the first of its kind in the entire country, that allows cameras and video inside the courtroom,” Morton said. “It eventually leads to things like court television.”
What happened in the Colorado skies that night led to tangible changes in our daily lives, to this day. This led to heartbreaking changes for more than 40 families.
“We must not forget the pain these families went through, and I hope we remember the victims as more than just people on a plane at a bad time,” Hesse said.