Here we go again. Thank you for bearing with me. The story I have to tell was related to me by a good friend I will call Hag. He told me this story in the mid 2000s. Sadly he passed in 2007. Hag was somewhat of a father figure to me who I met in the early 2000s. We fast became very close friends. I live in northwest Ohio which is also where Hag grew up. He lived here until the very early 1960s when, after a painful divorce, he relocated to the state of Washington. Upon relocating he soon was working union construction jobs. I believe the union hall was located out of the Seattle shipyards. Hag would have been in his mid twenties at the time. Hag was soon taking classes thru the union and eventually received a degree in construction engineering. This enabled him to work on jobs pretty much from start till finish whereas other workers only worked until their area of expertise was completed. They would then move on to the next job. Hag worked on many jobs that had to do with the steel companies or their subsidiaries and this is where he met Chuck (D.B. Cooper). Chuck was some type of automation expert (engineer I believe) who the steel companies brought in to update their production processes. I do not know if he was an independent contractor or more likely worked for a company that the steel plants contracted with. Hag said Chuck showed up in the area around 1969 and was there until November 1971. In fact Hag said Chucks job finished a day or two before the hijacking. During his time in Washington Hag and Chuck became fairly good friends often going to the bars together. Hag was an avid outdoorsman who coon hunted and bear hunted with friends. Chuck would often ask to accompany them on their hunts even though he never hunted or even carried a gun. Hag said he seemed to just to want to scope the areas out. Hag said Chuck would sometimes rent a plane (like an eight seat Cessna maybe) and fly Hag and some friends to Reno to gamble. Chuck would always pilot the plane and they always flew out of Seattle (I believe possibly the same airport as the hijacking) straight to Reno. The really strange part was that Chuck never ever gambled. Hag said they did this six or eight times. He also said they would fly the same route every time which he said was just a little east of the Columbian river. Although Hag never participated, he said Chuck and some friends often went parachuting somewhere close to the Columbian river (and even into it at times). I forgot to mention that Hag lived in the Portland and Vancouver area during this time. He said they frequented a bar on the west side of the Columbian just past where the Columbian turns north. He said it was often in this area (maybe more so on the east side of the Columbian river) that Chuck and his friends would parachute into. In fact Hag said they would often be picked up afterwards by this bar owner in his boat. At sometime during this three year period Hag and Chuck and their teammates won some type of city league eight ball tournament and had their pictures in one of the local newspapers. I am not exactly sure of the location. It was possibly in Portland Oregon or maybe Vancouver Washington. It was definitely in southwest Washington or northwest Oregon. Hag said the picture of Chuck looked very similar to the sketches of D.B. Cooper. He said it would convince me of his story. Unfortunately, as I have said, I doubt I have the skills or means to locate it. By the way, Hag said this bar owner and Chuck were very close and seemed to think the owner may have played a part somehow. I think I will need to take a small break now. There is more to the story (including Chucks full name and the area where he lived during this time). I would like to gauge your interest or lack of interest if possible. Also I would like to add that Hag was like family to me and he never lied to me about anything. He was possibly the most interesting person I ever met and lived life to the fullest. Even though we were only friends for maybe the last six years of his life, I was as close to him as anyone else (excluding my own father) in my entire 53 plus years of living. I miss him dearly.
