Aurora man, orphaned and abandoned during Vietnam War, reflects on life-changing adoption

Yahoo

03-05-2025

AURORA, Colo. (KDVR) — Fifty years ago, thousands of babies and young children were evacuated from the war zone in the final days of the Vietnam War. It was a herculean humanitarian effort dubbed 'Operation Babylift.'
The children joined legions of other adoptees who'd been placed in loving homes all around the world over the course of the war. John Lê Cupp of Aurora was one of those children.
Colorado nurse recalls 5 days in Vietnam that changed her life during Operation Babylift 50 years ago
Cupp was born in Vietnam. He never knew his birth father, who was likely an American GI fighting the war. And he never knew his birth mother, a Vietnamese woman. According to the story Cupp's always been told, he was abandoned along the side of the road somewhere in Vietnam.
'Me, and I think two other kids that were a little older,' he said.
Mercifully, while out on patrol, some American soldiers happened to find him and the two other kids on that roadside.
'And they took us to a nun that they knew had an orphanage,' Cupp told FOX31.
Had they not found him, the chances of him finding a home and family in Vietnam weren't great.
'If my parents didn't adopt me, I probably wouldn't be here today,' Cupp said.
During and after the Vietnam War, an estimated 100,000 so-called Amerasian children were born. They were babies born to Vietnamese mothers and American soldiers. The children were almost always left behind when U.S. troops returned home from war, and rejected in a country where they didn't look like everyone else.
Colorado educator reconnects with her roots, 50 years after she left orphanage in Vietnam
'They had more trouble getting adopted and getting fed first. The orphanage was already limited on food, so if there was any food left, rice water, you know, then we were given, we were the last stages of actually being given food,' Cupp said.
Thankfully, he wasn't in the orphanage for long. When Denver-based photojournalist David Cupp was on assignment in 1972, taking photographs of orphans in Vietnam, he decided one of the children belonged back home in Denver with his family.
'They really just said, hey, we'll take one of the babies that's, you know, in survival mode right now,' Cupp said.
David Cupp, who was a photographer for the Denver Post and National Geographic, used his camera to photograph every stage of what turned out to be an idyllic childhood for his son John, in a new home in Denver's Park Hill neighborhood, a world away from the ravaged war zone where he was born.
'(My dad) built a darkroom in his basement, so he's always had us in there helping him develop his films,' Cupp said.
Cupp says his childhood experiences actually inspired him later in life. It was the story of those American soldiers who found him on the side of the road as a baby that motivated him to join the Army himself, where he spent more than two decades serving his country. He retired two years ago.
Vietnam: 50 Years Later
He was also inspired by his father, who died a couple of years ago, but whose photos will forever tell the story of a loving family brought together by, of all things, the Vietnam War.
'Yeah, I was a lucky kid,' Cupp said.
To learn more of Cupp's story – and the stories of other Colorado adoptees and volunteers who were part of a daring evacuation from Vietnam 50 years ago, watch our special report 'The Vietnam War: Flight to a New Future,' airing Sunday, May 4 at 9 p.m. ET on NewsNation.
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