Robert Ivan Nichols was born there on September 12, 1926, the son of Silas and Alpha Nichols. The family lived in the community through his childhood and adolescence. He grew up during the Depression years, when the national economy had contracted severely and the economic prospects of places like New Albany were particularly constrained.
The details of his childhood and education are not preserved in the documentary record that investigators later assembled. What is clear is that he developed significant technical skills — skills in drafting, in electronics, in the kind of precise work that required both systematic thinking and manual dexterity. Whether these skills were developed through formal education, through vocational training, through self-instruction, or through some combination is not established. What is established is that these skills were sufficient to sustain a career in technical work both before and after his disappearance.
He entered the Navy in time to see service in the Pacific before the war’s end. The assignment to the Aaron Ward and the events of May 3, 1945 are documented. He was wounded, received his Purple Heart, and eventually returned home to New Albany after the war ended.
In 1947, two years after his return, he married Laverne Korte. The marriage produced three sons. He worked as a draftsman for General Electric at some point during the years that followed — a job that used the technical skills he had developed and that represented a stable, respectable occupation in the postwar period.
The marriage lasted until 1964 — seventeen years. Whatever the relationship between Robert and Laverne Nichols looked like during those years, whatever the quality of the home life he provided or participated in, is not documented in any accessible source. What is documented is that he initiated the divorce, that he told his wife she would learn his reasons “in due time,” and that he left.