If you’ve enjoyed a ride in a Vexus® or Ranger® during the past 55 years, you might send boat designing icon Randy Hopper a brief “Thank You” note. He probably had a serious hand in building it, and if you’re struggling to find the spirit of Christmas, he’d also be a good one to call.
Hopper, along with fishing boat industry leaders Keith Daffron, Lance Newton, Gary “White Cloud” Howard, Mendel Hughes, and others, started Vexus eight years ago by turning a vacant field in Flippin, AR, into the home of Vexus Boats—a first-class facility that would make a NASCAR team envious, and Hopper has since taken on the fun challenge of decorating the building’s lobby each Christmas.
“I love decorating for the sake of our employees. We have great camaraderie at Vexus. There is a lot of mutual respect for one another. And I can’t imagine our folks working at a place where they thought their leaders didn’t care about Christmas,” smiles Hopper.
Much like the roughly 200 new boat launches he’s been a part of the past five decades, the challenge of delivering something new and innovative for the lobby each December takes a lot of creative soul-searching. Last year featured one of Forrest L. Wood’s prized sleighs.
“Forrest plowed a lot of ground with mules and never lost his love of working horses. He even used them to pull sleighs when snow fell on the Ozarks. Heck, he even picked up former B.A.S.S. owner and Bass Fishing Hall of Famer Helen Sevier in his sleigh when she landed on a snowy day at the Flippin Airport,” grins Hopper.
Once again, a big dose of bass fishing history can be found inside the Vexus lobby in the form of dear friend Jerry McKinnis’ state-of-the-art 1969 bass fishing machine that Forrest built, being towed by the 1960 Corvette that Hopper restored.
“We restored the boat more than 20 years ago for Jerry, and it’s been in the Forrest L. Wood Gallery here in Flippin ever since. Stephen Vannada, who runs our Vexus trailer shop, custom built a trailer for it recently, and we couldn’t be prouder to have the rig greeting our employees and visitors this year at Christmas,” says Hopper.
For those who love bass fishing history, Jerry McKinnis and Forrest L. Wood, now both deceased, met as total strangers when Jerry showed up from St. Louis for a guided fishing trip to catch big brown trout on the nearby White River below Bull Shoals Lake.
Wood extended his hand and said something like, “I’m Forrest Wood, and I’ll be your guide today,” and an instant friendship began in a narrow river boat on that day nearly 60 years ago. Together, the two changed bass fishing history.
But in the short term, Randy Hopper is just trying to increase the Christmas spirit of folks who enter the Vexus lobby each day during this most wonderful time of the year. “They’re already asking me what I’m going to do for decorations next year. I told them maybe we’d create a couple of mechanical camels or something,” laughs the good-natured Hopper.
To learn more about the rich culture of innovation and craftsmanship Randy Hopper leads each day, please visit vexusboats.com.
