A detailer from Sellersburg, Indiana spent a week this summer scrubbing decades of tarnish off the aluminum skin of a retired presidential jet that carried seven commanders in chief, including Lyndon Johnson on the harrowing flight out of Dallas after President Kennedy was assassinated. Jerry Grant, owner of HR DetailWorx, traveled to the Pacific Northwest on his own dime to join an elite volunteer crew tasked with keeping the historic aircraft looking presidential decades after it was grounded for a newer model.
Grant worked on the plane known as SAM 970, a Boeing VC-137B that flew Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, according to the WDRB report by anchor and reporter Chris Sutter. The jet, delivered to the Air Force in 1959 as the nation's first jet-powered presidential aircraft, ultimately served seven presidents spanning Eisenhower through Reagan, per the same report. According to the Air Force Life Cycle Industry Management Center, the VC-137 was the first jet aircraft and SAM 970’s initial VC-137A configuration carried President Eisenhower. The Joint Base Andrews 2024 Honorary Commander Handbook records that Detachment 1, 1254th Air Transport Group received its first jet aircraft, a VC-137, in 1959. Historical accounts from the Museum of Flight note the aircraft also flew Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, carried the Apollo 11 astronauts after their 1969 moon landing, and transported Henry Kissinger on secret diplomatic missions to China and Vietnam in the early 1970s.
A Family Connection to the Air Force
Grant told WDRB he was inspired to pursue the work by his great-grandfather, an Air Force veteran he described as a role model and friend. He called the chance to preserve pieces of aviation and American history a surreal experience, a sentiment the station reported directly from Grant. Grant has worked on several military planes over the years, but the WDRB report notes this particular jet's connection to one of the most consequential days in American history, the flight that carried Johnson after Kennedy was shot in Dallas.
Grant is a member of what the industry calls the Detail Mafia, described in the WDRB report as a group of skilled experts who make planes, trains, and automobiles look brand new. According to the Museum of Flight, the jet was secretly outfitted early in its career by the Central Intelligence Agency as a reconnaissance aircraft under a program code-named Operation Lida Rose, an espionage effort kept so secret that President Eisenhower himself was initially not informed.
Volunteer Labor and Personal Sacrifice
The aircraft was officially retired from active Air Force service in June 1996 and placed on long-term loan to Seattle's Museum of Flight, where public walkthroughs began that October, according to the museum. Master detailer Renny Doyle started the restoration effort in 2003 after a Bush administration official asked him to rescue the jet, which had spent a decade deteriorating outdoors on an open-air tarmac, per the International Detailing Association. To qualify for the team, detailers must complete Doyle's Advanced 5-Day Training program, hold at least two years of active membership in the Detail Mafia, and pass a competitive application process that requires reapplying annually, according to Detailing Success.
Every participating member operates as an unpaid volunteer, covering their own airfare, hotel, and supplies while taking a week away from their own businesses, according to the Royal Aviation Museum. Grant paid for the Air Force One work on his own dime and worked from sunup to sundown, per WDRB, describing the labor itself as strenuous. Back home in Sellersburg, one of HR DetailWorx's first customers, Josh Gillespie, told WDRB his own truck is well taken care of thanks to Grant's work.
From Outdoor Decay to Covered Preservation
In 2016, the jet was moved from the outdoor tarmac into the Museum of Flight's newly built three-acre covered Aviation Pavilion, shifting the annual project's focus from heavy paint restoration to ongoing preservation, according to the International Detailing Association. Seattle's rainy weather had previously caused rapid tarnish on the plane's unvarnished exterior aluminum, which is why the volunteer crews still return every summer to maintain its brightwork. The Detail Mafia's annual project has since expanded beyond the presidential jet to maintain sixteen other historic aircraft at the museum, including the supersonic Concorde G-BOAG, the World War II B-29 Superfortress known as T-Square 54, and a B-52G Stratofortress bomber, per the same association. The National Park Service notes that installation and maintenance costs for outdoor static aircraft displays are high, underscoring the preservation challenges facing aging aircraft. The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum says it has the largest collection of historic aircraft and spacecraft in the world, illustrating the scale of publicly preserved aviation history.
During the week-long event, volunteer crews work twelve-hour days and go through roughly 25 gallons of specialized metal polish and 2,500 microfiber towels across the museum's fleet, according to KING5 News. Polishing a single Pratt & Whitney jet engine on the presidential jet alone can take a full day of manual labor, the station reported. For Grant, the payoff of that grueling schedule was tied directly to family history, a chance to honor his great-grandfather's Air Force service by keeping a piece of that era's aviation legacy gleaming for the public back in the Pacific Northwest.
