Earlier this summer, Bill Thompson was cleaning out an Alabama home and getting it ready for sale when he came across important mementos he felt needed to be returned to a Quad-Cities family.
The home, in Huntsville, had once belonged to Kenneth Warren Champagne, born in Burlington, Iowa, and his wife, Betty Irene Green Champagne, born in Davenport.
"There was a lot to clean out of the home," Thompson said.
Among the items Thompson found was a Purple Heart belonging to Richard "Dick" Milton Paper, of Davenport, a submariner in the U.S. Navy during World War II. He also found Paper's uniform, several other medals and a letter to the family signed by President Harry Truman.
The Purple Heart, which is given to those wounded or killed in combat, was issued in September of 1946, noting that the wounds Paper had received resulted in his death.
Thompson was able to do enough research to find an obituary for Robert "Bob" Paper of Davenport, who had died March 3, 2024, and who had been adopted by Richard Paper's parents.
From that point on, the search was on to find a living family member.
"I called the funeral home and let them know what I'd found and that I'd like to talk to a family member to see if they wanted me to send them these treasures," Thompson said.
It took a while, but just last week, Thompson received a call from Jeff Paper of Davenport, Bob Paper's son. Jeff Paper is retired after spending 32 years as a postal worker in Davenport.
Thompson is now in the process of boxing the items to send to the Paper family.
Richard Paper
Richard Paper's story hit the pages of the Quad-City Times almost 20 years ago, written in 2006 by longtime columnist Bill Wundram.
Paper was 22 when, as a submariner in the U.S. Navy during World War II, he disappeared. His parents, Herb and Fern Paper, and his fiancée at the time, Betty Green, never knew what happened to him.
Betty Green eventually married Kenneth Champagne, who was born in 1923 in Burlington, Iowa, and had attended St. Ambrose College.
Kenneth and Betty Champagne went on to have nine children. Kenneth Champagne had been an Army captain and was an engineer at the Redstone Arsenal near Huntsville, working near or alongside the men who created the Saturn V rocket that took Americans to the moon in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
While clearing the home, Thompson found hundreds of signed photos of prominent people, including astronauts John Glenn, Charles "Pete" Conrad, Ed White, Scott Carpenter and Wally Shera.
Thompson said there is one photo of German engineer Arthur Rudolph that was signed by him in May of 1961 and given to Kenneth Champagne. Rudolph later would be denaturalized and returned to Germany after it was discovered he used slave labor when he was in charge of Mittelwerk, which was the factory that built the V-1 and V-2 rockets and other war weapons used by the Nazis.
Herb and Fern Paper adopted 5-year-old Bob Paper in 1945, who told Wundram in 2006 that he always thought of himself as a substitute son for the Papers.
"Although, of course, I never saw Dick Paper, I always thought of him as my brother," Bob Paper told Wundram.
Dick Paper had been serving aboard the USS Lagarto. It had been assigned to attack a convoy of Japanese ships in the waning months of World War II. But the Lagarto, along with its crew of 86, disappeared in early May, 1945.
In May of 2005, a wreck believed to be the Lagarto was found by deep-sea divers in the Gulf of Thailand. In June of 2006, the Navy determined that the submarine found by the divers was indeed the Lagarto, which Japanese records indicated had been sunk by a minelayer.
By that time Dick Paper's parents had both passed away. Bob Paper told Wundram that he "grew up in a household that always talked of Dick. I accepted him as the brother I never knew."
Kenneth Champagne died Feb. 2, 1982, at the age of 58. Betty Green Champagne died Aug. 4, 2019, at the age of 96.
In 2006, Betty Green Champagne told Wundram about Dick Paper, describing him as "gentle, an easy-going guy."
"We were going to be married as soon as he got out of the service," she said. "I was so taken up by his Navy duty that I joined the WAVES, the women's unit. Dick told me a friend was making a sketch of our wedding ring. I never saw the sketch. He was reported missing before I got it. For a long time, I never believed Dick was dead. I always held hope that Dick would come back.
"I suppose I can say that Dick was my first love," Betty Champagne said. "Finally, I married Kenneth Champagne. Now I have peace to know what happened to Dick."
Families stayed close
The Champagne and Paper families stayed close throughout the years.
"We knew the Champagne family when we were little kids," Jeff Paper said. "We called them Uncle Kenny and Aunt Betty."
But it wasn't until about 20 years ago, after Wundram's story ran, that Jeff Paper said he learned that Betty Champagne had been engaged to Richard Paper.
Jeff Paper said they spent a lot of time with his grandparents, Herb and Fern Paper.
"We were always told to not ask about Dick," he said. "We were told he died a long time ago and they're still sad."
Stacey Struck, of Davenport, Bob Paper's stepdaughter, said that as a child Bob Paper had spent time in an orphanage with his four siblings.
Likely because of his time in an orphanage, Bob Paper had been a social worker, Jeff Paper said.
Struck, an educator and a former member of the Bettendorf School Board, said Bob Paper started at the Department of Human Services and had worked at Annie Wittenmyer. He also worked at Genesis Medical Center in DeWitt.
"He would have made a great teacher," Struck said. "He did a lot of conflict mediation as a social worker so he would have been good with students and parents."
Thompson said he has a few mementos he would like to get to the Champagne children and is looking to find them.
"I've come to know these families pretty well in my research," he said.
"I've got Kenneth Champagne's captains bars and some of those items he was awarded," Thompson said. "I'd like those to go to his sons."
© 2025 Quad City Times, Davenport, Iowa. Visit www.qctimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
