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

Soon Jen became very knowledgeable about the pilot and the U-2 Incident.

On her first trip to my condo, she noticed a picture of the U-2 inscribed by Kelly Johnson. She looked at the date next to the signature. It was the day she was born.

“Must have been fate,” she said with a laugh, many years later.

Jen quickly grasped the significance of her future husband’s enduring relationship with his late father.

“Gary was deprived of something most of us take for granted,” Jennifer said. “The impact that loss has had on his life is hard to overstate. But when you add the fact that he didn’t know the truth about this controversial figure…. Gary is the kind of person who needs to know the truth. Otherwise it would have haunted him for the rest of his life.”

Through the years, Jennifer has indulged my determination to chase every conceivable lead and press my father’s case. We often planned family trips around speaking engagements, air shows, media interviews, conventions, and meetings with Dad’s friends and colleagues. She tried to understand why I put so much of my heart and soul into the effort, sometimes worried that my quest was developing into an unhealthy obsession.

“Every time he achieves one goal to honor his father, there is another one waiting in the wings,” she said. “Sometimes I would like to see him put the same effort that he puts toward his father’s memory to his family at home. But I have also never been in Gary’s shoes. I have never been told my father was a traitor or a coward, so I can’t say his ‘obsession’ is anything other than normal.”

I don’t need anybody to tell me I’m a lucky man. Jen’s support and understanding through the years has been incredible. I can’t imagine my life without her.

Even before we learned that we were going to have a son, I had given the issue of names serious thought. As with so many things in my life, the choice was fundamentally shaped by the realization that the world viewed my father through a distorted lens.

My mother was adamant: She wanted us to name the boy Francis Gary Powers III. She had her reasons, and I understood them. She wanted her son to make a statement to the world. I liked the idea of Francis Gary Powers III, but did I really want to burden my son with all the misinformation associated with the name?

In the end, the decision turned partially on a piece of advice offered by Gregg Anderson during our trip to Moscow in 1990. “If you name him after your father, you’re doing it for the wrong reasons,” Gregg said. “But if you’re naming him after yourself for your own accomplishments, then you may be doing it for the right reasons.”

By the time our little boy arrived on July 2, 2002, I had earned my master of public administration degree from George Mason University, was managing the Vienna-Tysons Corner Regional Chamber of Commerce, and had founded The Cold War Museum.

In my mind, naming him Francis Gary Powers III was not the act of a man defiantly shaking his fist at the world. It was, instead, a symbol of how I was well on my way to transcending my father’s lingering shadow and establishing my own legacy.

To us and his friends, our son headed into his teenage years known as Trey. In the years ahead, he will have the opportunity to choose how he presents himself to the world. In time, I hope the name will become less of a burden and more a source of acknowledged pride.

Even as I pursued my father’s story with an insatiable desire to know more and spread the truth, I spent many of those years as the primary caregiver to Trey—making sure he did his homework and handling many of the household chores—while Jen worked a full-time job in the legal profession. “If he had a lecture or had to go out of town to set up the exhibit, Gary was the one who arranged for someone to get Trey on or off the bus,” Jen said.

Because they understood how important the quest was to me—and because I often involved them in the process—my wife and son never felt neglected. “If anything, we have grown because of it,” Jen said. “What his journey has taught me is to never give up. Every time a door was shut in Gary’s face, he would open another door. I don’t have that perseverance. I don’t think many people do. It’s a trait I really admire in Gary.”

On May 1, 2010, the fiftieth anniversary of the U-2 Incident, I was back in Moscow, telling an audience of soldiers and cadets at the Central Armed Forces Museum: “In order to understand the world today you must understand how we got here, and we got here through the Cold War.” 5

Describing myself as “walking, living, and breathing Cold War history,” 6I give at least four dozen presentations a year—sometimes accompanied by the exhibit—telling my father’s story and how it fit into the larger conflict.

“A lot of people have heard of Francis Gary Powers and know he was shot down, because there was quite a furor over it,” said Adam Smith, the director of the Experimental Aviation Association’s Air Venture Museum in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, where the I drew a big crowd in 2002. 7“But if you ask people what else they know about it, they don’t know.”

Refuting the conventional wisdom about Francis Gary Powers and the moment that defined him became a central part of my life.

The crowds who showed up for my speeches enjoyed hearing about the little boy who once asked, while being tucked into bed: “Dad, how high were you flying?”

The answer hit them like a punch line: “Not high enough! Or I would not have been shot down.”

“Gary, I can’t tell you how high I was flying,” the father then said. “It’s a secret.”

Especially in the wake of the 1998 Declassification Conference and my various other efforts to learn the truth, the people who attended my lectures were let in on the secrets of altitude and other once-classified details, pulling back the veil of the fast-fading Cold War.

Sometimes I encountered young people who expected me to talk about U2, the Irish rock band fronted by Bono.

Standing before groups large and small, I attacked the myth of the self-destruct button and poison-tipped pin.

Questioned by well-intentioned people who believed the false news they had read in the press or had been told during a time of inconvenient truths, I explained the reality about the self-destruct buttons.

“I have seen Gary handle the misperception about his father with dignity and grace,” Jen said. “He has never yelled or shown anger toward anyone who believed the misinformation circulating in the public. He would simply state the facts and move on.”

It took years and years of seemingly disparate events, bouncing off each other, for the federal government to begin casting a new eye on my father’s story. It took years and years of accumulated knowledge, allowing me to know the right questions to ask and the right buttons to push. It took a very supportive wife who loved me and understood. Sometimes, it took me becoming a pain in the ass.

“It was pretty inspirational to watch,” said my friend Bob Kallos. “Very methodically, Gary attacked these assumptions about his dad and proved them to be false.”

My friends and family often wondered why I was pushing so hard to vindicate my father.

“Gary was absolutely driven on the subject [and] stuck with it a lot longer than most people would have,” said his friend Chris Means.

Every time someone pushed back against the facts and insisted that my father should have committed suicide, or suggested that he spilled his guts to the Russians, I was forced to confront the doubts that had shadowed my entire life. It mattered not that I knew the truth. It mattered not that I believed with every fiber of my being that my father was a hero who did his best in very difficult circumstances. One uninformed person who bought into those myths gave them an enduring power over my father’s story. I was determined to reclaim that power.