SALEM, Ore. – For 52 years, a Salem family lived without knowing what happened to Vietnam Veteran Robert Nopp. His name was added to the list of those killed or missing in action in Vietnam in 1966 after his plane went down. Nopp was a husband and father to two sons.
“Robert Nopp and Marshall Capina were among the nearly 600 Americans who disappeared in Laos during the Vietnam War,” explained Ron Canon during a ceremony Monday at the Oregon Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
Robert Nopp was sent to Vietnam just a few weeks after his second son, Scott Nopp, was born.
"I went through periods of time where I would wish something would happen and he would be able to come home,” Scott Nopp explained.
But, Robert never came home and his family always wondered what happened. Scott was just five months old when his father was declared missing, leaving his mother Patti with two young boys to care for alone.
"She's been strong,” Nopp said of his mother. “I still don't know how she did it, being a single parent back then, not really being able to know if you're actually a single parent or not."
A phone call a few months ago finally brought the closure they have been searching for. Robert’s remains were found during an excavation of the crash site in 2016. The remains were then sent to a lab in Hawaii and were identified this past January.
“My mom never thought that this would come,” Nopp said.
In October, Robert will finally be put to rest during an interment ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery. The Nopp family plans to attend to honor his memory.
On Monday, Nopp’s family was honored with a Prisoner of War/Missing in Action Flag that flew over the Oregon Vietnam Veterans Memorial for the last year.
A speaker at Monday’s ceremony recited a poem written for Nopp’s family. It reads, in part: "Patti, when your closure comes and you know that he's been found, I'll know it too with thousands of soldiers, that Robert's homeward bound.”