FRANCIS POWERS DOESN'T FIT SPY PILOT ROLE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00001R000400060042-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 1, 1999
• Sequence Number: 42
• Publication Date: June 3, 1960
• Content Type: NSPR

CINCINNATI (O.) >JU $
POST &p1kiMElSe61 I Release 1999/09/17: CIA-RDP75-00001
Circ.: e. 267,672
Front Edit Other Page Page Pa 60
Date: JUN AD
His Father, Friends Agree:
F
Francis Powers Doesn t
Oliver Powers Recalls Son's First
Flight and How He Loved Planes -
What kind of person is Francis Gary Powers, the U-2 pilot
raptured by the Soviet Union and facing possible death?
t tPl sent a reporter into his moUntativ home to talk to his
father, his friends, his teachers. Here is what he learned:
BY JACK V. FOX
GRUNDY, VA. (UPI): The school day of the seventh-
grade class of Mrs. Mary Meade in Grundy High School
these spring mornings begins with a prayer for Francis
Gary Powers.
Whatever he may be to the rest of the world, the 30-
year-old pilot of the lost `-
U-2 is a hero in his home` known American spy since
town in the extreme west, Nathan Hale.
ern point of the Virginia That word "spy," is one
mountains. to avoid here. It falls in,
Francis left Grundy High about the same class as
In 1946. He had gone to "revenooer."
grade school in nearby
,, DIGGING into the past)
_ hamle
__ _
t
--
it isn't on the maps. rs - a+ gain and again the impres- brought down in his U-2 fa;
family home was a
"there {five daughters and the one Sion that he would seem inside Russia an,d the. Com-
boy) and his dad, Oliver, most unlikely for a cloak munist charges ,trumpeted
had a ramshackle shoe re- and dagger role. to the world, the father has
lmost to the :. ,.~""" one -in-an shoe
A t
ist
s
h
'
the ---
%
s
y a
He wa
ing through the steep val-
ley.
The boy loved to hike,
like the mountain men be-
fore him. There is a beauty
in these hills, but it is
stained with coal mine out-
croppings, soured with pov-
erty and plagued by sud-
den torrents. _You can read
the grimly huniorOtis' ha-
tred of the floods in the
names-Dismal River, Con-
trary Creek.
AN AMBITIOUS young
man has to burst out of
these surroundings. One
out of every seven families
has moved from the area in
the past 10 years. Francis
Powers broke the bounds
and, in so doing, may have
forfeited his life.
Dr. John T. Holland, pas-
tor of the Baptist church,
summed up the feelings in
his sermon last week when
he wondered that a "child
snuggled down in these
mountains" had been cho-
sen by fate the instrument
that led Apps d FdihR
summit conference and
point of painful bashful-
ness. He avoided girls. He
was a fair athlete, not a
star. He played football in
high school, moving from
guard to halfback in his
senior year because of his
swiftness afoot. In college
he went out only for track.
,lgrades were fair-he
finished, c o i n crdetitally,
22d in a class of 71 in high
school and 22d in a class of
59 at Milligan College.
His father refused to let
him go into the coal mines
after he finished school, and "HE WASNa daddy's boy,"
wouldn't enter his
bo
th
y
e
father's trade of cobbling. Powers said. "No one will
He enlisted in the Air Force ever know how , close 'that
because he was bored, was boy was to me. We had five
about to'be drafted, and his girls, too, and I told his
attempt to get a Coast mother, you raise them
Guard Academy appoint- however you Want, but I'll Mrs, Powers has gone
m e n t had not come raise the bay.' And I did," into seclusion, spending
through. Powers ffeced when part of her time here in
Up to that time his hori- IFrapcis?flrst,Went up in an the tiny green and white
sons had been bound to the airplane. The boy was 14 cottage of her mother, Mrs.
area around his birthplace and they were driving MonteenBrown inMilledge-
He went to through Princeto ' nW. Va., ville. Ga., and at the home
inn Jenkins Ky
.
e Ittni g
66 n%rlessoriocW g 0042-2
Pilot Kole
family almost every wcel"He kept after me to let
end. him go up and there was an
airport at Princeton " Pow-
OLIVER POWERS is en. ers said, "I remem>;er the
during as stark an ordeal as ride cost $2.50 and it was a
a father could. His only son woman pilot in a two-seater
is m n the ha ds of the Soviet plane.
'When he came down, he i.
samilitary very p very possibly branded close a said `daddy, I left my heart
spy and n
to death before a firing up there."'
squad. The elder Powers has
Powers, 55, is facing it tried to get State Depart-
with dignity and with g ment approval for a trip to
courage that only fleetingly Europe
peand Ruppaalsa to
wanes the desperation Premier Nikita Khrushchev
his son's s plight and nd the bit- (as a fellow coal miner and I.
ter frustration of being un- father) to let him take
able to -help. F
la
e:
i
'
ranc
c
s
p
Almost -every day since ,
STATINTL
BUT HE relines how little
chance those attempts have.
Closing his talk, he said he
was aware his son may be
e x e c u t ed, acknowledged
that Francis was unques-
involved in espio-
tionably
repair shop in this tiny Vir- nage.
ginia mountain town and "Some one has to pay and
worked at his cobbler's , erhaps it must be my boy,
trade. 1 he said slowly. "But know
Last week he sat at his I this. Whatever he did, he
bench and, between custom- did for, his country and it
ers, talked about his son. A may turn out to be one of
radio played incessantly the most valuable things a
and Powers paused for each man ever did."
newscast. He had gone on BARBARA GAY POWERS
working, he said, because
his son would want it that wanted her suitor to quit way. His wife is severely ill flmainrry before she would
him. But Francis
with a heart condition, ag. Powers told her she would
gravated by worry over her have to take the Air Force
son. and flying, too, if she
The striking, dark-haired
Georgia girl, now 24 but
only 18 when she married,
has borne up well waiting
for news of the fate of
 1 1i 43tI06VO14,Jer husband Gary--
ra o ncis.
They were married in
1954. The girld didn't want
any children.so long as her
husband was flying and
they have had none. In
1956, Powers resigned his
commission with the Air
Force and took a job as
"test pilot" with Lockheed
Aircraft.
He was making $627.48
per month then as a first
lieutenant. The Lockheed
job paid $1500 a month to
start. Premier Nikita Khru-
shchev has said Powers told
Russian authorities he was
making $2500 a month and
that he was saving to buy
a house.
Theses three pictures of Francis Gary Powers w e r e -supplied by his father,
t before he entered the Air F o r e e ; In the
i
a
s jus
nc
Oliver. On the left is Fr
center, he's shown with a fish he caught in Turkey; on the right is a snap taken
on a visit home from his job at Lockheed.
of her married
Albany, Ga.
of the word.
TYPICAL of his shynf,,
with girls, Powers met B~
bara through her moth(
He w,as an F.-84 Thunder
pilot with the 468th Fightt,
husband was not a "spy."
It surprised listeners be-
cause the U. S. Government
has admitted Powers was
making photographic espi-
onage- flights. It probably
is a matter of her definition
Mrs. Powers no doubt
knows a great deal about
her husband's high alti-
tude flights over Russia
from Adana, Turkey, where
he was based. But govern.
ment and Lockheed of-
ficials obviously have
warned her to say absolute-
ly nothing.
At the one news confer-
ence she held, she said her'
Squadron of the Strategic
Air Command based at Tur-
ner Air Force Base outside
Albany.
Mrs. Brown worked in
the base cafeteria-and as
he so often did with older
women-the young man en-
deared himself t4 her. Mrs.
Brown brought her young
daughter to meet the hand-
some pilot from the Vir-
ginia hills and their court-
ship was swift. Mrs. Powers
POWERS was a top-notch
fighter pilot, one of the top
six in his squadron. But his
record was not particularly
distinguished. His only dec-
oration was the National
Defense Service Medal,
given to all men in service
during the Korean War
whether they were in com-
bat or not..
But there was something
extra about the young man
that fed Lockheed and the
Central Intelligence Agency
most gerous and deli.
cate~ missions.
Dr. Bean Walker, the
soft-spoken, scholarly presi-
dent of Milligan College,
which Powers attended
from 19J6 to 1950, said that
in retrospect he remembers
a quality about the young
man that set him aside.
"I've seen the same trait
in young men singled out
for work by the Federal
Bureau of Investigation," he
said. "It's a, certain integ-
rity of intellect a n d of
character. Francis had it.
Tie was reserved, but not'
withdrawn: He was the type
of person you knew you
could count on."
Approved For Release 1999/09/17 : CIA-RDP75-00001 R000400060042-2
JUN 3 1960