Kleemans Skydive to Celebrate 49th Wedding Anniversary

As their 49th wedding anniversary was approaching, Louis and Clea Kleeman knew that they wanted to do some spectacular to mark the occasion.

So, of course, they chose to go skydiving.

“It was fun!” Clea Kleeman said of her experience in jumping out a perfectly good airplane.

Kleeman said that she and husband Louis live near Kingsley Field (also home to Hangar Kafe), and see the skydiving planes, as well as the crop-dusters, fly overhead all the time.

“I kept saying, ‘We’re going to do that someday,’” said Clea. “And he’d say, ‘Oh, no, we’re not!’”

The good-natured ribbing went back-and-forth like that between the two for quite a while, until Clea reminded Louis of something he’d said when they first got together.

In the early 1970s, Clea was a young widow who had just started dating again. One evening, she had a date lined up for an event in Golden City, but it fell through.

“My original date had gotten drunk and I needed another,” said Clea. “So we were set up on a blind date that night.”

Louis Kleeman was a young widower at that time, and was getting finished with the work day when he was asked if he’d be willing to go on a blind date. It was at that point he said, “I’m up for anything.”

It was those words Clea reminded him of saying the last time they bantered about skydiving.

“I reminded him that he said ‘I’m up for anything,’ and he just said, ‘Well I guess you’ve got me there,’” said Clea, with a laugh.

Before this, one of Louis Kleeman’s claims to fame has been winning an Immanuel Lutheran best beard contest in 1976, and again this year. Clea was recently inducted into the Missouri 4-H Hall of Fame during this year’s Missouri State Fair.

Besides marking their 49th wedding anniversary, Clea said that another motivation for their skydiving adventure was boredom: both Louis and Clea have been spending a lot of time stuck at home during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“When you can’t go anywhere and can’t do nothing, well, you’ve got to find something to do!” said Clea. “Yeah, it was kind of expensive, but we’d been wanting to do this for a long time, and you’ve got to try to work through life with no regrets.”

After getting on the plane at Kingsley Field, Clea said the plane had to make three full circles before getting high enough for them to jump; Louis said he believed they’d gotten to 10,000 feet up before jumping.

The Kleemans didn’t jump alone: they both jumped strapped to skydiving instructors. Clea said that it took about 7 minutes from jumping to reach the ground, where all of their kids and other family members had gathered to watch.

“You didn’t have time to get scared,” Clea said of their journey from sky to ground. “It was really neat, and I’m glad we did it – and I think now he is, too.”