Sixteen years is a long road when paved with rejection, said Lea Burke, mother of John Klopp. He moved to town just 15 months before he died. Just 15 months after finding acceptance here in Annandale. He was about to become a senior at Annandale High School and he was a friend of hobos, but that morning he just didn’t wake up. Two hours before he died, Texas Madman, a hobo he met and befriended a few years earlier, promised to take him to New Orleans for Mardi Gras to celebrate his graduation from high school. “He couldn’t believe it,” Burke said. “He said, ‘Mom, did he really?’” She told him a hobo never goes back on his word. “Madman was going to ride a freight train up to Minnesota in February, February,” she said with emphasis, “and Madman hates the cold. He was going to pick up John and bring him down on the freight.” Texas Madman is part of a community of hobos the Burkes call family. They even have their own road handles. Her son’s was Red Head Honor John. This February, instead of taking Klopp on an adventure in a freight car, Texas Madman sent a self-published autobiography titled “View From a Box Car Door,” autographed and dedicated in Klopp’s memory to be donated to the high school library. The book is one of 12 works of hobo stories and poetry Burke has collected in the past months. Over half of them are signed and dedicated to Klopp. As the word of the memorial spreads through the hobo community, Burke is sure more books will filter in. The books donated to AHS are only the second known public collection of hobo works in the United States, Burke said. And of the other collection, located on the East Coast, she doubts that many of them are signed. For some time Burke has wanted to create a memorial for her son, who died of natural causes July 6, 2002, during a Fourth of July celebration in Staples. He was a junior at Annandale High. She toyed with the idea of a bench, like the granite ones that sit outside the school with the words Annandale carved on them, but that didn’t seem to fit. What did fit for John was hobos. Klopp was born in El Paso, Texas, in 1983 and grew up in Big Lake. “He had a hard time relating to people,” Burke said. “As soon as people started acting like friends, he would push them away because he knew they were gonna reject him anyway. But that was sort of a Catch 22.” As a result, Klopp had only a couple close friends when he and his family moved to Annandale the summer of his junior year in high school. But things changed almost immediately. With the help of his sisters Colleen and Tricia, he started to make friends. “Instead of him going out and asking people to be his friend, I had people knocking on my door asking if they could hang out,” Burke said. “He was in heaven when a group of girls came over in bathing suits and asked him to go swimming. When school started and he got nervous and tried to push them away, they wouldn’t let him.” When Klopp died, Burke invited those friends to remember him by placing an object in his open casket. Klopp was buried with flowers, stuffed animals, small debts that were repaid and cigarettes that had been bummed. Besides Annandale, Klopp found acceptance in one other place. The National Hobo Convention in Britt, Iowa, became a tradition for Klopp and his family, who loved hearing the stories of the men and women who rode the roads and the rails looking for work, some of them since the Depression. “It’s a living history,” said Burke, who introduced Klopp to the hobo community in 1999. “At first he was a little shy,” she said. “I introduced him to all these hobos he wouldn’t have even thought of talking to the day before.” But by the end of the convention, Klopp had been accepted into the community and even given a new hobo name. The beauty of the hobo community is that they are accepting of everyone. “Hobos don’t care who you are or what you have done. All they care about is who you are at the moment and what is in your heart,” Burke said. Some of Klopp’s most influential friends were men with names like Iowa Black, Dante Fucwha and Texas Madman. When Burke married Preacher Steve Stewert, former Hobo King (a new king is elected at each convention), Klopp became even more ensconced in the hobo world. These were the people, along with Klopp’s friends from Annandale, who showed the Burke family the most support when he died. Now Klopp is part of a memorial service in Britt, Iowa, for all the hobo brothers and sisters who have passed away. His name will be on that list and read at that ceremony as long as a hobo is breathing, Burke said. “Hoboism is an important part of American history and its modern culture,” said AHS principal Dick Ofstedal. “This book collection will give our students a chance to understand that culture better. It will also give them a chance to know John a little better, because it was so important to him and his family.”
