The "Thanks Norm, For Your Service" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Making a delivery of some of my printing to the high school where I do the in-house printing during the school year.  Walking past the wall that features past students who have served or are still serving in the United States armed forces.  Neat display with 8x10 photos that are framed and a label on the glass that tells what branch of the service they were in and what years they served.  Since I taught at the school from 1967 until 1999 I knew most of the people pictured on the wall.  

Friend and classmate, Norm Billipp as seen
in my high school yearbook.

Then I came upon a framed photo that featured a rubbing from the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial of Capt. Norman K. Billipp.  Wow!!  I definitely knew this veteran, since he was a member of the class of 1962 at Manheim Township High School.  Not only knew him, but he was a good friend, since we  graduated from MTHS together.  Norm was a great swimmer as well as a good student.  Norm was born in Schenectady, NY on March 14, 1945, moved to Milwaukee, WI and then finally moved to Lancaster after junior high school, so I never had a chance to know him until we were classmates in high school.  After graduating from high school he was off to the University of Wisconsin where he enrolled in the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps Program.  Upon graduation with a degree in micro-biology, he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps in June of 1966.  He completed officer Basic School in Quantico, Virginia and was ordered to naval flight training that started at Naval Air Station, Pensacola, Florida.  Funny how some of the friendships we developed during our youth lasted such a short time, and then they vanished.  It was that way with my friendship with Norm.  After graduation, we never saw each other again.  Norm received his wings as a Marine Corps aviator at Naval Air Station, Kingsville, Texas, in early 1968.  He flew the single-seat, A-4 Skyhawk jet.  

Major Norman K. Billipp

Once qualified in that aircraft he departed for a one-year combat tour in South Vietnam.  He flew the Skyhawk for the first half of that tour, then flew the O-1G, Bird Dog, a two-place propeller aircraft, with Marine Observation Squadron-6, based at Quang Tri Air Base in the northern part of South Vietnam.  He flew 265 combat missions before his fateful flight.  While flying with the call sign "Seaworthy 17" on May 6, 1969, Norm and his aerial observer, John Hagan, from Savannah Georgia, failed to return from an observation mission between Khe Sahn and the South Vietnam border with Laos.  Bad weather as well as enemy anti-aircraft fire made the mission dangerous.  An air search was conducted the following two days, but proved unsuccessful.  Shortly afterwards they both were listed by the Marine Corps as missing in action.  I can still remember reading in the local paper about Norm's crash and the fact that he, and the plane, had not been located.  While he and his observer were still listed as Missing In Action, both Marines were promoted to major.  

Framed remembrance that is displayed
at Manheim Township HS.  The rubbing is
from the Vietnam Wall in Washington.

The Department of Defense listed him MIA until 1976 when the Marine Corps issued a "presumptive finding of death." In 1995 records were found in Hanoi and in early 1996 Laotian workers and a forensics team from the USA found the crash site and discovered the remains of both Norm Billipp and John Hagen.  For years, the needed information to locate Norm and John had been in the Hanoi War Museum, but the Vietnamese government had refused to release it.  In 1997 my friend, Major Norman K. Billipp, had his name added to the Vietnam War Memorial at panel 25W; row 9.  He was 23 years old at the time of his death.  At the age of 23, while I was teaching high school students at our Alma matre, Norm was fighting for me and his country in a war on the other side of the world.  Lost his life while doing his job.  Thanks Norm for your service and ultimate sacrifice to me and our country.   It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.  

PS: Since I wrote this story, I have received a few emails from Norm's brothers with updated information.  It follows:

1. Our family moved to Chagrin Falls in 1956 from East Aurora, N. Y. (after prior stints chronologically in Lancaster, Pa; Redwood City, Calif; Detroit; Hingham, Mass). We moved from Chagrin Falls to Lancaster in ’59.
2. Norm was 1/Lt. (02) when lost on MAY 6, 1969. While MIA status from MAY ’69 – June ’76, promoted to Capt.; then subsequently Major.
3. Place of birth: Schenectady, N. Y.
4. Call sign May 6, 1969 when lost flying O-1 Bird Dog: Seaworthy 37.
5. Personal Narrative: 13 month combat tour; first 7 months flying A-4 Skyhawk with VMA-211 in Chu Lai. No F-4 pilot time.
6. Norm’s Aerial Observer May 6, ‘69: John Robert “Bob” Hagan.
7. Declared MIA May 1969. Declared KIA June 1976.