Ed Greer: D. B. Cooper in a 3-Piece Suit

Seven years ago, electronics engineer Ed Greer, 33, was on the fast track at Hughes Aircraft Co. and an unlikely candidate to become a cult figure symbolizing rebellion against the corporate world.

Armed with a master’s degree in electrical engineering from UCLA, promoted quickly to section head, promised a position in higher management, Greer worked on classified defense contracts developing a night-vision gun and bomb sights. He had a nice home, a lovely wife and two young boys.

Once promoted, he tried to fit into the conservative environment of Hughes management, dropping casual attire and buying five three-piece suits, one for each work day.

But, noted Sherry McCulloh, his former secretary:

“As it turns out, no one actually knew the ‘real’ Ed Greer.”

On Sept. 9, 1981, Greer cleaned out his files. The next day, he disappeared. Hughes officials found his car one day later--his wallet and clothing in it--near the beach in Venice. They feared he may have drowned.

But that theory evaporated--and the mystery deepened--when another Hughes employee reported that he had spotted Greer, dressed in jeans, on a shuttle bus at Los Angeles International Airport around midnight the day he disappeared.

“You haven’t seen me,” Greer told the man.

Thus did the Ed Greer myth begin at the Hughes aerospace complex in El Segundo.

At a company where some chafe under unwritten rules of dress and demeanor, he became a corporate version of the legendary plane hijacker D. B. Cooper, who disappeared into Oregon skies almost 17 years ago, with a parachute and $200,000 strapped to his body.

Much like the fantasies about Cooper, who almost certainly was killed in his jump, the legends about Greer outpaced the probable reality of his flight. His co-workers knew at some level that an inner pathos was most likely what led him to flee, and that his action was cruel to the wife and children left behind.

But once they were convinced that his flight was not an act of espionage--an investigation found no evidence of such a motive--Greer’s colleagues decided to let their imaginations write the ending to his story.

Hughes employees started keeping pictures of his bearded face, always smiling, in their offices. Or they pasted his face onto other photographs to show him on the beach, entwined with beautiful women.

“You can think of all kinds of bad things that might have happened to him,” McCulloh said. “I like to think it was good things.”

And every year since the disappearance, Hughes employees gather to celebrate the anniversary of his departure. People who never even knew the man show up.

“Hughes is full of very straight-laced people. He is the anomaly. There is a little bizarreness in all of us,” McCulloh said. “How many people do you have in three-piece suits who are capable of this?”

Annual Celebration

This year’s celebration was held Friday, at Tequila Willie’s Saloon & Grill in Manhattan Beach. About 50 people held a mock political convention and nominated the missing engineer as the presidential candidate of the “Hughesocratic” party.

One catch-phrase of this political season--”Where was George?”--was altered to “Where is Ed?” Party-goers wore “Ed” masks, straw hats and badges with slogans such as “Put Down Your Beer And Vote For Greer” and “Vote For Ed, Get Us Out Of The Red.”

While the party and the mementoes signal escape to a more inviting existence, free from corporate cares, not everyone was pleased about the celebration.

“I’m kind of irritated about this party business,” said Greer’s former wife, Kit, who divorced him after his disappearance, remarried and now is living in Northern California. “I know engineers. . . . It is mildly amusing to them. If I had the money, I would show up and tell them what I thought. It is really not amusing.”

Blames Depression

After Greer left, she got a master’s degree in marriage and family counseling. With her expertise in that area and the benefit of hindsight, she believes now that he was suffering from depression. But, “I really couldn’t tell you over what,” she said.

“He was discouraged about life in general. I think he might have hit a burnout,” speculated the missing engineer’s father, Carl S. Greer Jr., a wealthy retired Sacramento businessman.

As they try to understand the event in retrospect, they point to small incidents that did not seem significant at the time, or seemed to be merely the normal frustrations of life.

At the party Friday, engineer Mark Martin recalled his last conversation with Greer, the day before the man disappeared. Martin was doing some drafting and Greer asked how it was going.

“Lousy,” Martin responsed. “I can’t stand drafting.”

Replied Greer: “Never become too good at something you hate. They’ll make you do it the rest of your life.”

A former boss, Dick Connett, noted that Greer was upset about a year’s delay in a promised promotion to assistant department head--Greer was in the Electro-Optical and Data Systems Group at Hughes--and also about a $15,000-to-$20,000 loss he incurred when he paid for gold coins to a company that went bankrupt and never delivered them. In addition, Connett said, Greer said he felt that his wife was too demanding: he complained once about how she insisted that they would need to make renovations to a house they were thinking of buying.

Felt He Was a Failure

But what may be most important, Connett suggested, was that Greer felt he was a failure compared to his father, a multimillionaire.

The subject of the speculation was born Carl Edward Greer on March 18, 1948, and grew up in a family whose wealth came from the ownership of motels in Sacramento.

They had a 42-foot boat in the Bahamas and a 75-footer in a Los Angeles marina. “He spent a lot of time on boats,” his father said.

Greer went to UCLA, married while in school and started working at Hughes on July 10, 1972, just weeks after getting his master’s degree.

“He was a young fellow, very very bright as far as electronics is concerned and had a bright future as far as Hughes aircraft was concerned,” Connett said.

‘On the Fast Track’

“He was on the fast track. Hughes has certain minimum standards. Five years is the best you can do to be a group head. Ed got there in five. Section head after seven. Ed got there at 6 1/2. He was scheduled to be assistant department head.”

But he ran into trouble there, Connett said.

“He had gone into my boss three levels up and made some comment about a program and the way it was going to be run. This particular individual is not very forgiving. Here (Greer) is just starting out and is telling a guy with 20 to 25 years experience how to do things.”

The Hughes manager held up the promotion for a year on the grounds that Greer was “a little immature.”

But just before the disappearance, the man had relented. “In one week, the paper work would have been official,” Connett said.

Home Life Seemed Fine

At home, things also seemed to be fine.

Greer’s first boy arrived about a year after he started working at Hughes. The second one came in 1979.

McCulloh, Greer’s former secretary, said she never got calls for her boss that indicated any sexual entanglement. “He was a real homebody,” she said. “He loved his wife and kids and would go home to them every night.”

But Greer’s former wife says now, “The worst thing you could say about our marriage was that we didn’t fight. All I say is that it was a 12-year-old marriage. It was probably boring.”

Just before Greer left, he showed his wife how to turn off the water and power, chores he normally handled. In retrospect, she realized that he was preparing her for his departure.

Greer did none of the things many contemplating flight do.

The bank accounts and the safety deposit box were not cleaned out. He left his credit cards, driver’s license and passport behind. A review of his home and office phone records revealed no unusual calls.

He appears to have confided in no one. “It turns out he was not that close a friend to anyone. “He tended to be a bit of a loner,” Connett said.

The trail after the disappearance is now seven years cold.

Greer has never called his father, his former wife, his children or any of his co-workers.

Period of Rage

His wife went through a period of rage, bitterness and economic deprivation.

“I know what it is like to be widowed at a young age,” she said.

She tried to get Social Security assistance for the two children but the agency refused her claim on the grounds that there was no proof that Greer was dead.

Eventually, she made her peace with the situation, even learning from the horrible incident.

“I have a new baby. . . . I fight more with my new husband,” she said. “I used to think it was the worst thing that ever happened to me but now I think it was the best thing.”

At Hughes, company security officials notified the FBI that no classified documents were missing. The disappearance was written off as a domestic matter.

Cleared Paper Work

In a footnote that attests to corporate sensitivity about potential embarrassment, Connett said that his boss came by “within 24 hours” and told him to get rid of the paper work about Greer’s promotion.

“My boss said, ‘I want everything out of the system about this,’ ” he said.

The FBI logs Greer as just another one of the 65,000 missing persons on record at the agency’s National Crime Information Center.

But a $100,000 reward offered by Greer’s father has attracted the interest of an unusually large number of detective agencies--75 by last count--who have tried unsuccessfully to find him.

About two years ago, using a pseudonym, his father sent out a notice of a $50,000 reward to all executive placement firms and the larger employment services, reasoning that his son might have looked for a job through them. Last fall, he upped the reward to $100,000 and sent it to all 4,500 detective agencies in the United States as well.

With no new information, the case of Carl Edward Greer has left people free to speculate about what happened to him.

His friend and co-worker, Joan Klapper, said: “He may no longer be with us, or he may have just needed a change of environment. Ed’s friends each have their own theory as to what happened, and most believe he is alive and well and living in some exotic land.”

At Hughes, an amateur poet immortalized him in a bit of doggerel:

Listen my children and you shall hear

Of the sudden flight of Eddie Greer .

Some men gain fame by feats of skill .

Others write great lines of wit.

Some are elected, some steal, some kill .

What Eddie did of note was split.