The current news about DB Cooper - that Marla Cooper formerly of Sisters Oregon was his niece and his name was Lynn Cooper - is interesting as Sisters is just west of here. It's got that Local Boy Does Bad attraction. I looked up a local history book that did indeed show that Grace Altimer of Sisters, Oregon married Don Cooper and one of their daughters is Marla.
No mention of Lynn Cooper in the book, so I went to the google news archives and searched for Lynn Cooper in any paper named “Bulletin” (the local paper is the Bend Bulletin). There were some “hits” on him and a bit of irony, I think, if he was indeed hijacker D.B. Cooper
Nov. 19 1946 “local items” article for the town of Sisters says Lynn Cooper hurt his arm in the gym. It says he lived in the Brooks-Scanlon logging camp and was a 7th grader (13 years old? Born 1933? 38 in 1971 at the time of the hijacking?):
Irony 1 – On the day before the above article, the Nov. 18, 1946 Bulletin ran an article about a plane being stolen in the Northwest:
The next week this article from the Nov. 25 1946 Bend bulletin shows he was entered in a Sisters, Oregon youngster boxing match, but couldn’t fight because of his hurt arm:
Irony 2 - RIGHT above this article is a news report about the first international jet airliner flight:
(I know that the flight D.B. Cooper hijacked wasn’t international, but it would be funny to think of a despondent and broke 38 year old looking though his old scrapbook at his mom's house at Thanksgiving and seeing two events around Thanksgiving 25 years prior – stolen plane and jet travel – connecting the dots and Hey, Presto! a folk legend is born)
The first news article was published 8 days after I was born
and about 4 days after TDD was born!
RADU
I thought D.B. Cooper was an alias, not the persons real name. This article claiming to be a relative needs to be checked out. From what I can remember from the almost 40 years ago, no one had any vague idea who the highjacker was.
Yeah, the hijacker gave his name as "Dan Cooper" and then the media in 1971 mistakenly called him "D.B. Cooper". It doesn’t seem to wash that a guy named Lynn Cooper would give an alias of Dan Cooper, especially since the real Lynn Cooper had a brother named Don Cooper who was the dad of the lady making the claims… she is going to be releasing a book about uncle Lynn AKA D.B. Cooper soon. Great PR.
This Lynn Cooper is buried in the cemetery back behind our house and I guess a couple of out of town TV news trucks were there today. Great, we’re now next to a roadside attraction
