|
SOUTH BURLINGTON, Vt. - Bobby Noble grew up knowing everything;
his mother didn't hide from him the fact that he was born in England
and that he was adopted as an infant in the late ‘70s. He also grew
up honoring his father, Capt. Robert William Noble, who had died
serving his country as a Vermont Air National Guard pilot.
Even though only 2 years old when it happened, Bobby Noble said he
vividly recalls the black car pulling up to the house and two men
talking to his mother.
|
At the Vermont Air National Guard Base, Sept. 3, 2015, Bobby Noble stands in front of the same type of aircraft that his father flew while serving as a pilot in the VTANG. Noble's visit was the first time he had seen the memorials bearing his father's name, who died in a training mission in the early 1980s. (U.S. Air National Guard photo by Staff Sgt. Victoria Greenia)
|
“I remember wondering what the men could have told her
that made her more upset than I had ever seen,” he said
about the day he and his mother learned his father had
crashed in an EB-57 airplane just a quarter of a mile south
of then Plattsburgh Air Force Base during a routine training
mission Feb. 2, 1980.
In honor of Robert Noble, his
name was etched in brass and placed on the Honor Roll plaque
as a reminder of VTANG pilots' sacrifices. It was this
memorial that would bring Bobby Noble back to the base more
than three decades later. While in conversation with Master
Sgt. Brent Farnham, manager of VTANG's Services Flight, he
mentioned that his father had been a pilot in the Guard.
A longtime Green Mountain
Boy with a deep sense of pride in its heritage, Farnham felt
the name Robert Noble was familiar. Eventually he remembered
seeing it on a plaque in the Operations Building and then
realized Bobby Noble was part of a Vermont military legacy.
At Farnham's invitation, Bobby Noble visited the
base on a warm September day. Having grown up watching “Top
Gun” and loving airplanes, things that would connect him
with his father, he was excited just by being at an air
base. But he was also echoing the footsteps his father had
walked decades before, a man he mostly knew only through
other people's memories.
The first stop was the Honor
Roll plaque, the link that had brought him to the base and
his connection with the Guard. He quietly read the swirly
letters of John Magee's poem “High Flight,” which gives
praise to the lives of former aviators and their adventures.
Toward the end near the words, “And, while with silent,
lifting mind I've trod/The high un-trespassed sanctity of
space/ Put out my hand, and touched the face of God,” he
found his father's name. Reaching out, Bobby Noble touched
the brass plate, bent his head and closed his eyes.
Later he said, “Realistically we're talking about something
that happened 25 years ago. But all the feelings, all the
emotions, are put into a special little place in the back of
your mind where you don't necessarily forget about them.”
The feelings compounded when Farnham led him to a small
field where legacy airplanes the Vermont Guard have flown
now rest. On the EB-57, a plane from the 1980s, he saw again
his father's name. Just paint on a metal shell, yet buried
emotions bubbled to the surface as he thought about his
father's sacrifice.
After taking a photo and then
running his fingers over the stenciled letters, he stepped
aside to have some time to himself. Farnham, also moved by
the profundity of the moment, respectfully stood a distance
away.
“I don't think the word ‘family' is just a
buzzword around here on base,” Farnham said about the strong
relationships formed among the Green Mountain Boys. “I think
we really are a family, and I wanted him to know he was a
part of that. And I think he did see that.”
Farnham
was also able to give Bobby Noble archived photos of his
father in his pilot uniform, as well as pictures of his
mother holding him in her arms while receiving the Air Force
Commendation and Meritorious Service Medals for Robert Noble
posthumously.
Again, Bobby Noble was overcome by
this window into the past where his childhood had been
melded into Vermont Air National Guard legacy. Later he
would bring these mementos to show his mother.
“It
was incredibly powerful,” he said. “Not only the extent to
which [the VTANG] went to make the experience amazing for
me, but what really struck a chord with my mom was that the
brotherhood that was present for her in 1980 is extended out
to me so many years later.”
It's a feeling he said he
wants to share with his son as well. He said he was going to
plan a day where they could visit the base together and he
could show him his grandfather's name and see how his memory
is still honored.
After a childhood full of love
with a step-father and siblings whom he described as
incredibly nurturing and loving and a mother who went to all
his sport games and practices, Bobby Noble said he holds no
resentment toward the military for the loss of his father;
in fact, he said, he finds it honorable that he died serving
his country. From it, he has another family: The Green
Mountain Boys.
He said he thinks his father would
have had it no other way.
By U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Victoria Greenia
DOD News / Defense Media Activity
Copyright 2016
Comment on this article |
