Chapter Eight
THE LAST ECHO
On the morning of June 14, 2012, I walked into the Pentagon feeling the full weight of my family’s complicated history. It had not been easy living in the shadow of all those doubts. But I was not easily deterred by long odds or setbacks.
In the years after founding The Cold War Museum and becoming its first full-time executive director, I faced a series of formidable obstacles. While working full-time as the president and CEO for the Vienna-Tysons Corner Chamber of Commerce to support my family, I put in an additional 20–40 hours per week to promote the museum to civic clubs, military officials, and media outlets. I used my traveling U-2 Incident exhibit as a catalyst for a permanent museum, while searching and negotiating for artifacts, pitching for governmental and corporate funds, and spearheading an oral-history project involving Fairfax County public-school students.
“The whole point of The Cold War Museum was to educate future generations in what that time period was all about,” I told the media.1
Embracing the concept, Virginia social studies teacher Patti Winch said, “It’s hard for our students today to understand the Cold War. I don’t think they connect with the fear factor.”2
In 2006, after I had raised enough money to work for the museum full-time, the nonprofit entered into a partnership agreement with the Fairfax County Park Authority to build a permanent museum on the site of an old Nike missile-launch facility in Lorton, Virginia. We began signing up sponsors, but the agreement ultimately fell apart in 2009, when Fairfax County Park Authority walked away from the negotiating table after the museum had lined up donors who had pledged to write checks to get the facility up and running.
The donors wanted to see the lease signed first, and the park authority wanted to see the money in the bank. It was a catch-22, with neither side wanting to take the first step.
Local politicians and community leaders developed great hopes for the museum, which they envisioned as a significant tourist draw.
“I’m very disheartened,” said Irma Clifton, the president of the Lorton Heritage Society.3 “I think it was the perfect opportunity to tell the story of that part of our history where it actually happened.”
The disintegration of the deal was a crushing blow. My failure was plastered all over the front page of the Washington Post.4
Thirteen years of my life had been invested in making this museum a reality. And we got so close. Then we were shot down. Seems to run in the family.
But then my telephone started to ring. That’s when I learned the truth behind the hackneyed PR phrase “There’s no such thing as bad press.”
Alerted by the news story, representatives from several other northern Virginia localities called to express interest in creating a home for the museum. My board and I eventually secured a deal with the Vint Hill Economic Development Authority in Fauquier County, which provided a facility suitable for renovation and very favorable terms.
With funding sources drying up in the wake of the severe recession, I resigned from my staff position, to preserve the organization’s finite resources. I became Founder and Chairman Emeritus and turned the operation over to the volunteers. No one was prouder than me to watch the new leadership, chaired by John Welch, negotiate the final hurdles of turning my dream into a reality.
Utilizing a facility once used by the NSA, CIA, and US Army Security Agency, The Cold War Museum opened in 2011 at what used to be known in intelligence circles as Vint Hill Farms Station, featuring an estimated $3 million in rare artifacts—including but not limited to a Stasi prison door; the US Postal Service mailbox used by spy Aldrich Ames to contact his Soviet handlers; a prisoner’s outfit worn by a member of the captured USS Pueblo; a sailor’s uniform from a USS Liberty crewmember; and the largest known collection of civil defense memorabilia in the United States. The frequent tours of schoolchildren and history buffs validated my original vision, preserving and teaching about the milestone events of the epic clash between East and West.
By this point in my life, I was a family man with mounting responsibilities, learning to balance my personal life with the powerful urge to educate the world about my father and the Cold War.
Though I started out as a young man who always heard the voice of his mother ringing in his head, telling him to be skeptical of other peoples’ motives, I endeavored to embrace a certain amount of vulnerability. But my scars ran deep. I remained very guarded. Truthfully, I always felt like I had to hold something back, until I met Jennifer.
The beautiful daughter of a business associate, Jennifer Webber, came into my life in late 1995. She could sense that the business-like vibe I was projecting was clearly a defensive mechanism to keep people at a distance. On one of our first dates, she said, only half joking, “I don’t know whether to call you ‘Gary’ or ‘Mr. Powers.’” This was also because she was ten years younger. Had she called me Mr. Powers when we first met, I would probably not be writing about her now.
Jennifer remembers learning about Francis Gary Powers from her older brother, Bo, and feeling sorry for his parents. When she later studied the U-2 Incident in school, she never learned that he had survived the shoot-down.
When she was twenty, her mother asked, “Do you know who Francis Gary Powers is?”
Aware of the historical figure but still unsure of herself, she said no.
It turned out that her mother, Binnie, who served on the Downtown Fairfax Coalition’s Festival of Lights and Carols committee, knew the pilot’s son, who was the executive director of the coalition at the time.
“I couldn’t wrap my head around the son’s age, thinking his father died in 1960,” she said.
Sometime after this, during an event at the Old Town Hall, I noticed this beautiful blond standing next to my friend Binnie, who just happened to be Binnie’s daughter. I was immediately smitten, and one thing led to another.
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.