While the pressure of the ordeal exacerbated Barbara’s issues, the family back in rural southwest Virginia was shocked to learn that Francis was involved in spying on the Soviets.
After learning about the shoot-down, Jan Powers Melvin, who was married, with two small children, and was living in the Washington suburb of Falls Church, Virginia, immediately called her sister Jean, who still resided in Pound. Jan knew their mother watched soap operas in the afternoon, and she asked Jean to go over and break the news, so she would not hear it on television.
“We were all just shocked, because we had no idea what Francis was doing over in Turkey,” Jan said. “Once the initial shock started to wear off, we were all scared to death what they were going to do to him.”
Pulled into the spotlight, Pound and the surrounding area became a magnet for reporters from across the globe, all trying to trace the background of the infamous spy. “You got the impression that some of those people were coming here to find out something embarrassing about Francis or the family,” said his sister Joan. “Or they wanted to look down on us country folks.”
Oliver happily answered questions about his son, expressing his pride that the boy was doing something important for his country. But the father’s frustration was frequently evident. “What can I do?” he once said.88 “I’m just a little man out here in the coal country and my son’s life is at stake.”
Several days after his son’s capture, Oliver penned a letter to the Soviet leader:
My Dear Mr. Khrushchev:
I extend to you and Mrs. Khrushchev my regards as one parent to another. Pilot Francis Gary Powers is my only son.
I am asking you to be lenient with him in your dealings with him. He has always been a fine young man and we love him very much.
As one father to another, I plead with you to let him come home as soon as you can find it in your heart to do so that he may be with us a while longer. Please give him this note from his mother enclosed in this letter.
P.S.—I would appreciate it very much if you would reply as soon as possible.89
Khrushchev responded in a telegram, offering to allow Oliver to visit his son but dashing his hopes of an early release. “The law is the law,” he wrote, “and I am not in a position to interfere.”90
When news of the U-2 Incident hit the papers, sixteen-year-old high school junior Rosa Anne Speranza was standing in the kitchen of her house in Richmond, Virginia, near her mother, when her father pointed at the story he had just finished reading on the front page of his morning newspaper.
“If that were my son, I would want to be there,” he said.
An Italian immigrant who had built a successful life in Virginia’s capital city—developing Richmond’s first shopping center and owning a popular nightclub and restaurant—Jimmy Speranza loved his adopted country and appreciated the importance of family. Aware that the pilot’s family were Appalachian people of modest means, he worked with three friends to quietly initiate contact and offer to pay the father’s way to the upcoming summit in Paris. Oliver wanted to plead his case directly to the Soviet leader, telling reporters he was willing to offer himself in place of his son. When the summit collapsed, Speranza arranged to pay Oliver and Ida’s expenses to Moscow for the trial.
“The United States has been good to me so now I want to do something good for this boy who has done his best for his country,” he told a reporter when news of the gesture leaked.91
Out of the difficult circumstance, a special friendship developed between the Speranzas and the Powerses, who spent several nights at the Speranza home in Richmond. “They were the sweetest, dearest, most down-to-earth people,” recalled Rosa Anne. “My mom and dad felt a real connection to them. The situation was awful, but we were blessed to get to know them.”
To make matters worse, another American plane fell out of the sky on July 1, 1960. An RB-47 reconnaissance plane was on a secret mission over the Arctic Ocean when it was shot down by the Soviets. Two members of the crew survived and were shipped to Lubyanka, where the KGB began four months of intense interrogations.
If there was one thing that connected the family members to Francis so far away, it was the shared sense of powerlessness.
While his wife and parents worked through various complications with the visa process, Frank was informed that the investigation was finished at the end of June. He had endured sixty-one days of interrogations, while confined to a tiny cell, with only a few censored letters connecting him to the outside world.
When the indictment was announced, he learned that he would be tried for espionage according to Article 2 of the Soviet criminal code. The law provided punishment ranging from seven years’ imprisonment to death.
During the summer, a rift developed between Barbara and Frank’s parents, starting with their decision to hire separate lawyers. The Virginia Bar Association, believed to be a front for the CIA, stepped forward to fund the legal defense, although Frank would not be allowed to engage an American attorney in his defense.
The real fireworks started when Oliver brokered a deal to sell his exclusive story to Life magazine. The figure was never revealed, although speculation ranged from $5,000 to $20,000. Henry Luce, the magazine tycoon who controlled the Time Life empire and happened to be a close friend of Allen Dulles, was well known for such arrangements. For instance, the $500,000 contract he signed with the Mercury Seven astronauts in 1958 was approved by NASA and contributed mightily to the mythology of America’s pioneering spacemen.
But the impression that Oliver was eager to profit from his son’s tragedy disturbed many, including his daughter-in-law.
“Barbara became infuriated at the commercialization of her husband’s ordeal,” Baugh wrote. “Oliver dropped a few hints to various people questioning Barbara’s fitness in view of the reputation she had acquired from various escapades.”92
The father suggested that his daughter-in-law was responsible for not giving him any grandchildren—she had experienced a miscarriage the year before—and that his son had only renewed his contract with the overseas assignment so he could continue accommodating Barbara’s lavish lifestyle.
The simmering feud eventually reached the media.
“All I can say is that Mrs. Barbara Powers turned down several offers of such a nature,” said William P. Dickson, the president of the Virginia Bar Association. “I don’t know whether Powers’ parents followed the same line of conduct. But I am truly delighted that the wife of a man fighting for his life refused to turn a profit from his plight.”93
Tensions were so high, Barbara refused to fly to Moscow with Oliver and Ida, so she and her entourage traveled separately from Georgia.
When he was escorted into the ornate Hall of Columns inside the House of Unions on the morning of August 17, which happened to be his thirty-first birthday, Powers was temporarily blinded by the television lights and flashbulbs. This was appropriate symbolism, because the defendant, dressed in a blue pinstripe suit with a white shirt and blue tie, was a made-for-TV villain.
He looked around for his family but could not locate them, which was just as well. Barbara, seated with the rest of the family, broke down in tears at the shock of seeing her husband paraded onto the stage as a criminal.
With a history of hosting classical music performances as well as some of the Stalinist purge trials of the 1930s, the Hall of Columns featured several dozen chandeliers, plush red seats, and a large red-and-gold hammer-and-sickle banner draped above the stage. It looked like a theater, not a courtroom. About 2,000 invited guests, including Khrushchev’s daughter, Elena, showed up for the show trial, which for three days focused worldwide attention on what Radio Moscow called “a premeditated and carefully prepared act of aggression against the Soviet Union.”94