Francy Powers Jr. - Spy Pilot - Francis Gary Powers, the U-2 Incident, and a Controversial Cold War Legacy

When US Air Force Major Rudolf Anderson Jr. returned for his sixth mission over the island nation and was blasted out of the sky by an SA-2 missile, some in the White House and the Pentagon saw the hostile action as the first shot of a war. But Kennedy kept his cool and eventually forced the Soviets to withdraw the missiles.

For those in Washington who continued to insist that the Soviets did not possess the capability to reach a U-2 at maximum altitude, the Anderson mission was definitive proof that they did, and it supported Powers’s claim that he had not descended to a lower altitude over Sverdlovsk.

When she heard about the U-2 going down over Cuba, Sue Downey immediately thought that it must have been piloted by Powers, thinking the trip to the West Coast was just another agency cover story. But Frank really was in California.

He was back in the air, far from danger.

After landing a job as a U-2 test pilot at Lockheed, Frank began a long-distance relationship with Sue. They both thought it felt right, but since they had each failed the first time they were married, they wanted to take the time to be sure.

The wedding took place in a little chapel in Catlett, Virginia, on October 26, 1963. Frank quickly began the process of adopting Sue’s daughter, Dee. The family lived for a while in the pilot’s penthouse bachelor apartment before moving to a house near the Burbank airport and eventually to the San Fernando Valley town of Sherman Oaks.

In contrast to his relationship with Barbara, which was always full of doubts and suspicions, Frank found true happiness with Sue. They argued like any couple, usually when Sue had too much to drink. But Frank never doubted his second wife’s devotion.

“Our mother was smart, kind, and sassy, with a fabulous personality,” said Dee, who turned six the month after the wedding, “and she loved our father beyond belief.”

When they found out they were going to have a child of their own, Frank and Sue started saving their loose change, so they could afford a private hospital room.

During her pregnancy, Sue experienced a particularly memorable dream: Seeing their baby on a bear-skin rug. Determined to make his wife’s dream come true, Frank bought her a bear-skin rug.

This is where I, Francis Gary Powers Jr., enter the story.

According to Mom and Dad, not long after I came into the world at Burbank’s St. Joseph’s Hospital on June 5, 1965, one month premature, they took me home and placed me on the rug for a memorable picture.

By this time, my father was feeling increasingly alienated from the CIA. In April 1963, every U-2 pilot was presented with the prestigious Intelligence Star—except the man who spent twenty-one months in a Soviet prison. Not until two years later—when John McCone was on his way out—would the slight be rectified. It was not the last time some high-ranking officials of the agency found it more convenient to pretend Francis Gary Powers had never existed.

Not everyone felt conflicted. Frank was attending a function for Lockheed employees at the posh Beverly Hilton in 1964 when Allen Dulles took the opportunity to praise him from the podium. It was unexpected and incredibly gratifying. “Embarrassed the devil out of me,” he later recalled. 48

Happy to be back in the air, Powers struck a “quiet, introspective” vibe at social gatherings, according to Mary Finch, then the wife of fellow Lockheed test pilot Bob Gilliland.

“Frank was a warm, kind, decent man,” said Jeannie Popovich, Sue’s friend from the agency, who saved up her money to make several visits to California.

During her first trip west, in 1965, Popovich was on the freeway with Sue, heading out to do some shopping, when they heard an announcement on the radio that a U-2 had crashed in the California desert.

“Sue nearly wrecked the car,” she recalled. “Awful thoughts were going through my head. What if Frank had been hurt, or worse, killed?”

They were all relieved to soon learn that my father was fine, but they were saddened by the death of another U-2 pilot, Buster Edens. They had even considered naming me in his honor.

I enjoyed a special connection with Jeannie. As a four- or five-year-old, I often sat in her lap with my arms around her neck, soaking up every ounce of her attention.

“I love you, Jeannie Popovich! Will you please wait for me until I grow up so I can marry you?”

The man I knew growing up was not mad at the world. He was a good and loving father and husband who enjoyed his life and was determined to move on and make the best of the cards he had been dealt.

But the echoes of 1960 haunted him.

Too many people believed what they wanted to believe.

“I still feel like a scapegoat,” he told one reporter. 49

It hurt him to think anyone could actually believe he would betray his country.

Dad and I were very close. As a little boy of three or four, I sometimes visited him at the Burbank Airport, his home base as a Lockheed test pilot, and I would carefully walk on the wings of his U-2 as he held my hand.

“His dad always had a smile on his face,” recalled my childhood friend Joe Patterson.

Chris Conrad, the son of actor Robert Conrad and one of my closest friends, envied the father-son connection he witnessed between us.

“My father was famous and all that, but he was a guy who was mostly not around for me growing up,” the younger Conrad said. “It was completely different for Gary. Mr. Powers was really about Gary and spending time with Gary. He really loved his son. They had a relationship that I didn’t have with my dad.”

I guess I didn’t know how lucky I was to have a dad who wanted to spend time with me and involve me in things. I looked up to him. He was my role model.

My mother was a widely liked figure among my circle of friends, who appreciated her Southern hospitality. “She was very charming and welcoming,” Patterson said.

Several years after the CIA denied his request to write a book about the U-2 Incident, Dad moved forward with the project, working with author Curt Gentry on Operation Overflight , which was published in 1970. It was a cathartic experience. For the first time, he felt a measure of power over his own story.

However, soon after the book was submitted to the CIA for review, Lockheed dismissed him, and he became convinced that the order came down from Washington.

Around this time, Dee was sitting in her fifth-grade history class when the teacher began talking about the U-2 Incident, telling the class that Francis Gary Powers should have killed himself to avoid capture by the Soviets. His little girl was stunned. Her father? Her father was a bad man because he hadn’t killed himself?

“I was crying when I got home that afternoon, and Mom wanted to know why,” she said.

Mom promptly drove to the school and got in the face of the teacher and the principal.

“It was a very traumatic moment for me,” Dee said.

After leaving Lockheed, Dad landed a job flying a Cessna 170 traffic airplane for Los Angeles radio station KGIL. When I became old enough, I sometimes flew with him during the summer, soaking up the experience as Dad patrolled high above the freeways.

In the beginning, the onetime U-2 pilot conceded a certain amount of “stage fright,” 50but in a short amount of time, he became a radio veteran, typically reporting four times each hour while flying at an altitude of 1,000 to 3,000 feet.

Even though it was not quite the same as the thrill of flying off into the stratosphere, Dad enjoyed the job because it allowed him to make a living in the sky. Trying to explain the special feeling that had captivated him for nearly his entire life, all the way back to that day at the fair in West Virginia, he told a reporter, “The higher you get, the greater the sense of detachment. It’s indescribable, but it’s the detachment.” 51