Word: mckone
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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When she felt lowest, Connie McKone consoled herself by recalling the survival training that John got after he joined the Air Force and graduated from navigator and bombardier school in 1954. That tough course would be useful now. "I want to come home so badly," John wrote. "Kiss each of the children for me and pray God I will be home soon...
...Like McKone, Bruce Olmstead seemed to worry more about what his ordeal would mean to his family than what it would do to him. His own spirit, which he showed from the moment he joined the Air Force after graduating from Kenyon College in 1957, was more than enough to sustain him. Brought up in a devout Episcopal family, Olmstead made the most of a Catholic Bible surprisingly provided by his jailers. He read Scriptures and spent hours making up sermons. "Often in his letters home," said his brother, Dermatologist Brent Olmstead, "he'd include a little prayer...
Enough Blame. For Gail Olmstead and Connie McKone, the toughest job of all was to follow Air Force advice to remain calm and quiet, not to make personal appeals to Khrushchev, not to complain to the press. It seemed to the two women that very little was being done for their husbands. Regularly, every two weeks, the U.S. State Department sent notes to the Soviet Foreign Office and asked that the two officers be released. Regularly, the notes drew evasive replies...
...know if it's the State Department's fault, or President Eisenhower's fault, or the American public's fault for allowing this case to drag on," said Connie McKone during her troubled time. "I guess there's enough blame to go around. One thing I'll never forgive our Government for is telling us absolutely nothing about the fate of our husbands. We had to hear the first word about their capture on television . . . I realize things are done we can't be told about, but I won't feel everything...
Just as their plane taxied toward takeoff, there was a sudden jolt. Two tires blew out. While spares were flown from Warsaw, the Electra's passengers were taken back to the airport terminal. McKone and Olmstead made the long hour's drive back to the U.S. embassy. No one could say when their plane would be ready to leave, and every passing minute increased the possibility of a news leak. The two men were spirited into the ninth-floor apartment of the embassy's air attaché, Colonel Melvin J. Nielsen. Embassy electricians were ordered...