Stephen Edwards Plopper

Steve Plopper, an Indianapolis attorney whose career often involved negotiating with tough characters in distant capitals, died accidentally on July 14 while snorkeling off Key West, Florida. He was 81.

An expert in international business law, he spent many years representing entrepreneurs and investors including Beurt SerVaas, a former Naval intelligence officer and Indianapolis City Council president with business interests around the world, many of them in places others feared to tread.

Plopper sealed deals — or walked away from them — with European prime ministers, NATO generals, Middle Eastern autocrats, Russian oligarchs, Chinese military and many other formidable counterparts. And through all his calculated risks, his approach was to be unafraid of failure — in his mind, the real tragedy would be in not trying, his friends and family said.

Saddam’s megayacht

To recover SerVaas’ investment in a brass smelter in Fallujah after Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, Plopper sued Iraq’s Ministry of Industry in the International Court of Arbitration in Paris, and ultimately won after lengthy appeals.

Collecting was another matter, even after Hussein was killed. At one point, he secured an attachment on Hussein’s megayacht, the Ocean Breeze, when it appeared in the harbor in Nice, but Iraqis soon moved it out of reach. He finally arranged a face-to-face meeting.

“I said ‘Steve what in the hell are you doing, they’re going to shoot you!’ He just laughed and went,” recalled his longtime business partner, Mike Jarvis.

It was in that meeting in Istanbul, Jarvis said, that Plopper learned where an Iraqi tanker was moving in international waters. He could seize the oil.

“Steve had to smile walking out,” Jarvis said. “They lost the yacht but they got the tanker.”

Polish rule of law

Plopper founded a law firm in Warsaw with three Polish attorneys and helped draft Poland’s property-law framework after Lech Walesa became its first democratically elected president.

Working with a partner who was also a Polish law professor, he wrote the principles of U.S. mortgages and contracts into the nation’s new code, forming a bedrock for capitalism in the formerly communist country.

“As Lech Walesa moved Poland forward, Steve was one of the individuals on the sidelines who was so instrumental in helping that country be strong in business administration,” Jarvis said.

His own business ventures over the years included an Indianapolis liquor store and a medical marijuana distribution company in Warsaw. But his biggest investment involved a Polish telecommunications firm that provided satellite technology to military clients. The venture brought him into contact with shadowy figures in global hotspots — and ultimately proved too hot to handle.

‘Work, school and heartbreak’

Stephen Edwards Plopper was born Oct. 5, 1943, in Indianapolis, the second of four children of attorney Curtis Plopper and Mary Edwards, a bank trust officer who was among the first women to graduate from the Indiana University School of Law.

The family moved to Evansville and then Boonville, Indiana, where his father’s law practice foundered. To help pay the bills, his father became a guest preacher at churches around southern Indiana. Steve, a cute young boy, would pass the collection plate.

As he later told the story, church deacons came knocking during one particularly lean month, seeking their cut of the donations. He said his father sent him to the door, and young Steve told them: “We’re going to have to pray on that.”

He also showed an early appreciation for attorney-client privilege, when his older sister Kathy accidentally shot him with a BB gun, the pellet lodging in his upper lip. They swore their younger brother Mike to secrecy and kept the real story from their mother for many years.

After his parents divorced, he became a family breadwinner, delivering newspapers and working other jobs through high school to help his mother provide for his siblings. “He was our protector — Mom had to make money to help us survive and so did he — he was a very solid provider,” his younger sister Trish recalled.

Years later, he told his older son Chris that his early years involved nothing but “work, school and heartbreak,” making him determined to live life to the fullest.

Surviving Vietnam

He attended Evansville College and then Butler University, his tuition paid by the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps. To pay other bills, he was a salesman at Stout’s Shoes — fostering a lifelong shoe fetish — and tended bar at the Melody Inn.

He graduated in 1965 with a bachelor’s in history and political science, married Linda Wallace, a fellow Butler student, and then reported for duty as the Vietnam War was raging.

Capt. Plopper would do multiple tours from 1965-1969 and earn a Bronze Star on missions with the 965th Airborne Air Control Squadron while Linda was raising Chris in military housing outside Sacramento, California, and Panama City, Florida.

His role as a weapons controller was to spot North Vietnamese targets for U.S. fighter jets to strike, using radar surveillance data.

Their huge, four-propeller C-121 Constellations flew some missions between 50 and 300 feet above the water to bounce signals into the skies where Chinese MiG fighters were flying. Once, he recalled watching a fireball roll through the fuselage as their plane was hit by enemy fire.

And then more crashes

Discharged in 1969, he survived another crash in 1985, as a passenger in a small charter plane whose wings iced over in a winter storm. He moved into the co-pilot’s seat as they struggled to make an emergency landing. The aircraft hit just short of a runway in Angola, Indiana, breaking in two.

His earlier seatmate was killed, and everyone else was injured. Despite a broken back, he pulled another passenger from the wreck and credited his Air Force experience for avoiding going into shock.

“I was stunned. When I came to, the only person I saw was Steve,” recalled the passenger, Tony Schlichte. “I remember Steve helping me out onto the tarmac.”

A legal settlement over the crash would pay for Plopper’s second sports car — a red Porsche Carrera. “He liked fast cars,” Jarvis recalled.

A long legal career

Thanks to the GI Bill, Plopper earned his law degree at Indiana University in 1972, and joined the trust department of Indiana National Bank, where he enjoyed steaks prepared by a young Wolfgang Puck in the building’s top floor restaurant.

Then he joined Klineman, Rose and Wolf, where he developed a reputation as a bulldog negotiator. He later left to form Plopper & Partners LLP, eventually practicing together with his son Nicholas for about 17 years.

He never fully retired. A longtime member and two-time president of the Country Club of Indianapolis, he loved golfing, playing poker, and betting on horses with his brother Mike — they were looking forward to the next Breeders’ Cup.

He also attended every extracurricular event he could to see his grandchildren perform. What he looked forward to most of all was buying them shoes.

His final adventure

Steve was devoted to Linda, and after she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease, caring for her took a toll. He was commiserating just days before his death with his brother-in-law Don Stidham. Don wrote that it feels like the fourth quarter. Steve texted back: “I’m living in overtime.”

His final adventure — snorkeling in the ocean, despite a heart condition and other ailments — was just one more risk he felt was worth taking. He didn’t prepare for a funeral, other than telling his sons to play “I Did It My Way” at the ceremony.

In addition to Linda, his survivors also include his brother Michael, sister Patricia (Don), sons Chris (Carol) and Nick (Audra), and grandchildren Trent, Trey, Charley, Reagan, Trace and Zachary.

In lieu of flowers, please make memorial contributions to the Greater Indiana Chapter Alzheimer's Association.