Perry Jamieson

Mary Lee Jefferson		

Air Force History and Museums Program 2001


1	 A Historic Setting ....................................3

2	 The Air Force Heritage...........................19

3	 Recent History .......................................43

Acknowledgments ...............................................61

	 Notes....................................................................63



In 1878 historian Dawson Lawrence argued that many factors 

had combined “to make good the claim of Prince George’s County to 

one of the proudest positions in the sisterhood of counties which con-

stitute the good old State of Maryland.” He then enthusiastically sup-

ported his point with a long list of the area’s virtues, among them “its 

picturesque scenery; its undulating surface; its numerous and abun-

dant springs of clear, cold water; its running streams, tributary to its 

two grand historic rivers.” Near the center of this pastoral scene that 

Lawrence described stood a beautiful country estate, Belle Chance.

1

Dr. Stewart’s favorite

“Old Fishing Hole,”

one of two ponds

behind Belle Chance,

to the southwest. 

Lying just to their

south into the early

1980s, wasa third

smaller pond.


Colonial Days: “The Chance”

Maryland’s story began in 1632, 

when King Charles I granted the colony to 

Cecil Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore. 

Two years later his brother Leonard 

brought two ships, the Ark and the Dove, 

and 140 pioneers to the New World. They 

bought a village from the native Americans, 

named it Saint Mary’s City, and made it 

Maryland’s first European community. The 

Calverts, Roman Catholics from Yorkshire 

County, England, wanted their domain to 

become a religious sanctuary as well as a 

profitable enterprise, and they encouraged 

more colonists to join the first group of 

settlers.2

Maryland grew into a prosperous 

colony that eventually contained twentythree counties. Prince George’s originated 

with an 8 May 1695 Act of the General 

Assembly and was constituted on 23 April 

1696. It consisted of land taken from 

Charles and Calvert counties, and was 

named for Prince George of Denmark, the 

husband of the future Queen Anne of 

England. The first county seat was Charles 

Town (which in the 1690s most locals 

already were calling “Mount Calvert”), a 

village on the Patuxent River in Mount 

Calvert Hundred.3

Upper Marlborough, shortened by a 

postal clerk to “Marlboro” in 1893,4 became 

Prince George’s county seat in 1721. 

Thomas Truman Greenfield surveyed this 

village in 1706 and its early settlers named 

it in honor of John Churchill, the first Duke 

of Marlborough. This military leader was 

well known to his countrymen at the time 

because just two years earlier he had won a 

decisive victory over the French and Bavarians at the Battle of Blenheim.5 The “Upper” in the town’s name distinguished it 

from Lower Marlboro, an older settlement 

that stood about a dozen miles farther 

down the Patuxent River and on the 

Calvert County shore.6 Upper Marlboro 

prospered and grew to be the social, 

cultural, and governmental center of Prince 

George’s County.7

To encourage settlement in 

Maryland’s counties and to reward his 

benefactors in England, Cecil Calvert used 

his charter from King Charles to award 

patents of land. His descendants continued 

this practice, and applicants eagerly tried 

to get as large a grant as possible. One 

observer of this process reported that 

“every man provides beforehand to take 

up so much at the first Patent, that his 

Detail from a map of the state of Maryland by Dennis Griffith, published in 1794, showing the area around “The 

Chance” in Prince George’s County, east of Washington, D.C.


great Grandchild may be sure not to want 

land.”8

In 1719 Clement Hill was awarded 

one of these colonial patents. In his forties 

at the time, Hill was a landed gentleman 

who managed his estates and, like other 

men of his station in eighteenth century 

America, sometimes practiced as an attorney.9 Following the English tradition of 

giving a name to real property, the Calverts called the land granted to Hill “The 

Chance.”10 

Clement Hill’s 1719 patent gave 

him 428 acres. In 1721 he sold two hundred 

acres of his new property to two other 

planters. Edmond Henebree purchased a 

hundred acres for twenty pounds sterling, 

and Thomas Price the same amount for 

eighteen pounds sterling.11

As for the part of “Chance” that 

Clement Hill retained, he no doubt planted 

much of it in tobacco, which dominated 

the economy of colonial Maryland in 

general, and Prince George’s County in 

particular. Cultivated by African-American slaves and exported to England, this 

leaf crop reaped great profits during the 

seventeenth century. In Prince George’s 

County and throughout Maryland, taxes 

were assessed, debts were paid, and land 

was priced in pounds of tobacco, rather 

than in pounds sterling. Smoking was a 

common habit in both the Old and New 

Worlds. When colonial artists sketched the 

men of Maryland, they typically showed 

them puffing on “church-wardens,” longstemmed clay pipes. Ideas about smoking 

and health changed drastically over three 

centuries, but tobacco remained a major 

crop in Prince George’s County into the 

twenty-first century.12

In addition to tobacco, the plantations of Clement Hill and his neighbors no 

doubt also supported good-sized herds of 

livestock. Cattle and hogs could roam and 

forage for themselves on the large tracts of 

empty land that were a feature of every 

early colonial plantation. During the 1600s 

settlers in Maryland commonly owned 

more livestock and ate more meat than the 

farmers in western England.13

By the mid-1700s the colonists had 

developed Prince George’s County into a 

region that was well cultivated and “civilized” by European standards. “By the 

midpoint of the [eighteenth] century,” 

historian Alan Virta summed up, “not a 

section of the county was unsettled. . . . 

Prince George’s County had become a 

populous, well-established agricultural 

community, where all the amenities of 

civilized colonial country life could be 

found.” By the 1750s this area, and the 

Chesapeake Bay and its tidal rivers, 

boasted sizeable populations, while in 

contrast central and western Maryland 

remained wild country.14

The Darcy Family

In 1772 Clement Hill owned 128

acres of his original “Chance” award, 

acreage that he called “Part of Chance.” 

That year he sold this property to “John 

Da[r]say.” The Darcy or Darcey family 

(different spellings appeared over the 

years) would own the “Chance” estate for 

several decades. In 1775, three years after 

Clement Hill sold the property to John 

Darsay, the Revolutionary War began. 

This conflict probably did not disrupt 

daily life at “Chance,” since little military 

activity took place in Prince George’s 

County during the War for American Independence.15

After the Constitution was ratified 

in 1789, the new Federal government 

conducted its first direct tax assessment.

This official appraisal depicted the 

“Chance” as no more than a modest residence, although it did feature a cluster of 

outbuildings. The assessment reported 

that Darcy owned “a dwelling house, 

20’x16’; a kitchen 16’x12’; a corn house, 

12’x10’; a shop, 20’x12’; a meat house measuring 12’x10’; and a [corn] house, 12’x12’ 

for a total tax worth of $125.00.”16

The War of 1812

While the Darcys and other residents of Prince George’s County saw little 

of the Revolutionary War, they witnessed 

a major campaign of the War of 1812, one 

that produced some of the most dramatic 

episodes in American military history.

A British fleet commanded by Vice 

Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane brought 

about 4,500 soldiers, led by Major General 


Robert Ross into the Chesapeake Bay in 

August 1814. The redcoats sailed up the 

Patuxent, debarked near Benedict on the 

nineteenth and twentieth and marched 

north toward Nottingham.17 On 22 August they captured a largely deserted Upper Marlboro and rested there for over 

twenty-four hours, while General Ross 

consulted with his informants in the area 

and considered the best route to his objective: Washington, D.C.18

Between the American capital and 

the British invaders stood Brigadier General William Winder and a force of about 

2,000 American troops, who had made a 

camp at the Wood Yard. Today rendered 

“Woodyard,” the name refers to the area 

around where Rosaryville Road branches 

off from Woodyard Road (Maryland Route 

223). This locality is just off the southeast 

corner of Andrews Air Force Base and less 

than five miles from Belle Chance.19 On 22 

August General Winder forayed east from 

the Wood Yard, learned that the British at 

Upper Marlboro outnumbered him, and 

retreated north.20

 On that Monday, 22 August 1814, 

the American troops may have passed 

near, if not through, Darcy’s “Chance.” 

The estate lay on a direct line running 

from the Wood Yard to Long Old Fields, 

where General Winder’s men camped that 

evening. The name of the place where the 

Americans bivouacked suggested a planting area that had been allowed to stand 

fallow for some time. It was also called 

”Battalion Old Fields,” perhaps because 

its open character made it useful as a drill 

ground.21 The surrounding region, in contrast, was densely wooded, which added 

to the cleared area’s value as a training 

and camp site.22

Long Old Fields today is known as 

Forestville,23 a community around the 

intersection of Forestville Road and Pennsylvania Avenue (Maryland Route 4), just 

north of Andrews Air Force Base and Belle 

Chance. At least one structure in the 

locality still echoes the settlement’s earlier 

name: Longfields Elementary School stands 

at the end of Orleans Avenue in Forestville. 

About 2 p.m. on 23 August the 

British ended their rest stop at Upper 

Marlboro and started west toward Long 

Old Fields. The Maryland summer heat, 

which at times reached 100 degrees, slowed 

the redcoats. General Ross soon halted and 

camped in the area of—perhaps well to 

the west of—the “Melwood” plantation,24

an estate over three miles southeast of the 

Americans at Long Old Fields.25 

Today the name “Melwood” appears in the vicinity of the intersection of 

Marlboro Pike and Woodyard Road. The 

plantation’s identity survives in the Melwood Mall, west of this crossroads, and in 

the names of the Melwood Pond Community Park, Melwood Elementary School, 

and many other places in the area along 

the Woodyard Road.26

Northwest of the British at Melwood, the Americans remained at Long 

Old Fields during 23 August. At sundown 

General Winder ordered his outnumbered 

troops to withdraw toward Washington. 

Shortly after 8 p.m. they crossed the Eastern Branch, today’s Anacostia River, and 

the exhausted soldiers spent the night in 

the capital.27

General Winder’s command 

alone was outnumbered by the British, 

but on the twenty-third other American 

forces began marshaling along the Eastern 

Branch. By the end of that day, perhaps 

6,000 soldiers had gathered to defend their 

capital, and it was the British who stood at 

a numerical disadvantage.28 Most of the 

American force, however, was made up of 

hastily mobilized militia units, who were 

short of both food and sleep.29

Around 5 a.m. on 24 August the 

British left their camp in the Melwood 

region and began a march that would take 

them to Bladensburg and Washington. 

Feinting toward Alexandria, the redcoats 

at first headed west along a route that carried them north of the Darcy plantation.30 

They then moved north to Bladensburg, 

where they arrived about noon.31

That same Wednesday afternoon 

the British attacked and defeated the 

Americans in the Battle of Bladensburg, 

an engagement witnessed by Secretary 

of State James Monroe and Secretary of 

War John Armstrong.32 General Winder 

estimated his casualties at 30 to 40 killed 

and 50 to 60 wounded. The Americans 

also lost 120 men captured,33 including 


Nineteenth-century headstones marking the graves of Edward Darcey and his wife, Hannah, on the grounds of

Belle Chance.

Commodore Joshua Barney, who was 

wounded. The British attackers had suffered higher casualties, but they had won 

an open road to Washington.34

The redcoats rested several hours 

and marched into the American capital 

that night, after President James Madison 

and other officials had fled the city.35 The 

British burned the Capitol, the White 

House, and other public buildings, setting 

fires that blazed all night. On the night of 

25 August the invaders left the smoldering city and began an unopposed return 

to the ships waiting for them at Benedict. 

The British withdrew on a direct line from 

Bladensburg to Upper Marlboro, a route 

that took them northeast of “Chance.”36

No doubt the Darcy family knew 

at first hand about these stirring events of 

the Washington campaign and of the one 

against Baltimore that followed it.37 This 

second operation culminated in the British fleet’s bombardment of Fort McHenry 

and Francis Scott Key’s composition of the 

“Star Spangled Banner.” The Americans, 

despite the humiliating destruction of their 

capital, continued the war against Great 

Britain and negotiated a satisfactory peace 

treaty, which the Senate ratified in 1815.

The Civil War Era

In 1818 Edward Darcey inherited

the “Chance” estate from his father John.38 

Edward had married Hannah Peacock in 

1799, and they had at least three children. 

Hannah or “Hanner” Darcey died in 1807 

and was buried in the family cemetery, 

on the grounds of the present-day Belle 

Chance. Mary Darcey, a daughter of 

Hannah and Edward, married Coleman 

Fry in 1821, and the couple had at least 

one son, William. County tax assessors in 

1828 listed the family’s ownership of three 

slaves and 193.5 acres.39 

On 8 April 1842, when Edward 

Darcey was seventy years old, he deeded 

“Chance,” which by then had grown to a 

272-acre plantation, to this grandson, William Fry. Edward Darcey died about three 

months later, on 30 June, and was buried 

next to his wife, Hannah, in the family 

cemetery.40

This Darcey family burial plot 

stands less than three hundred feet southeast of today’s Belle Chance, and is one of 

several private Prince George’s County 

cemeteries that survived into the twentyfirst century. The remains of Edward and 

Hannah Darcey rest there, surrounded by 

a white picket fence over three feet high 

and enclosing an area roughly fifteen feet 

square. The wife’s stone reads: “Hanner 

Darsey D.T.L. [“departed this life”] Jany 

12, 1807.” The husband’s headstone, more 

professionally inscribed, is engraved: 

“Sacred to the memory of Edward Darcey 

who departed this life June 30th, 1842, aged 

70 years.” A footstone stands a little more 

than eight feet away from this marker.41


Chapel 2, Andrews Air Force Base. Forest Grove Church, the chapel’s original designation, was built in 1854 by members of the Methodist Episcopal Church South.

The Darcy family may have another twenty-first century legacy, in the name 

of a Prince George’s County thoroughfare. 

Darcy Road makes a semicircle of about 

fifteen miles through an area just north 

of Andrews Air Force Base. Winding 

through the community of Little Washington, it connects the Ritchie and Westphalia 

Roads. This road has followed roughly its 

present path since at least 1861. In 1967 

this route was given the name “D’Arcy 

Road,” but many signs omit the apostrophe and the Alexandria Drafting Company’s maps label it “Darcy Road.”42

In 1848 Edward Darcey’s grandson, 

William Fry, sold the “Chance” plantation 

house and 108 acres around it to Charles 

F. Calvert. A direct descendant of the 

famous colonial family, the buyer was 

a member of the prominent Calverts of 

Mount Airy. Charles F. Calvert acquired 

land beyond his original purchase and 

eventually expanded the estate to 360 

acres. He gave the property the name that 

it would carry into the twenty-first century: “Belle Chance.”43

Calvert, like every other American 

of his generation, was engulfed during the 

1850s by the debate over slavery. For some 

abolitionists, who were a scorned minority, this Southern institution represented a 

sinful violation of human rights. The great 

majority of Northerners, however, focused 

on a narrow political question: Should 

slavery be allowed to spread into the new 

territories that were opening up in the 

western United States after the Mexican 

War? It was this controversy that eventually led to the secession of eleven Southern 

states and to the Civil War, the bloodiest 

conflict in American history.44 

The slavery debate divided many 

families, the major political parties, and 

some religious institutions, as well. During the 1850s mainline Protestant churches 

split along Northern and Southern lines. 

The Methodist General Conference, for example, declared that its membership was 

open only to churches that endorsed 

abolition. Incensed by this position, many 

churches below the Mason-Dixon line left 

the General Conference and formed the 

Methodist Episcopal Church South.45 

Maryland lay on the border between North and South, and its people held 

divided opinions about slavery and secession. The state’s laws permitted the “peculiar institution,” but the legislature voted 

against leaving the Union. Maryland’s 


The cemetery at Chapel 2.

Protestant churches were likewise divided. 

The Baltimore Conference, for example, 

voted to accept the General Conference’s 

condemnation of slavery. But in strongly 

pro-Southern Prince George’s County, 

which would give Republican Abraham 

Lincoln only three votes in the election of 

1860, many churches rejected this position. 

A number of congregations in the 

Bladensburg circuit decided to leave the 

Baltimore Conference over this issue and 

declared themselves part of the Methodist 

Episcopal Church South.46

A church located not far north of 

Calvert’s Belle Chance offered one example of these state and local patterns. The 

congregation of the Old Fields or Forestville Methodist Church, today’s Forest 

Memorial United Methodist Church at 

3111 Forestville Road, dated back to 1816 

or earlier. Provoked by the anti-slavery 

stand of the Baltimore Conference, some 

of its members broke away and formed 

a Southern institution. They moved to a 

location less than two miles east-southeast 

of the Darcey house and built Forest Grove 

Methodist Church, a chapel of the Methodist Episcopal Church South.47 

The congregation dedicated their 

new building in March 1854, and secured 

the deed for its small lot the following 

year. The Planters’ Advocate, an Upper 

Marlboro newspaper, reported at the time: 

“Church Dedicated - The new Methodist Church South, near Centreville in this 

county, was dedicated on Sunday last in 

the presence of a large congregation. Reverend Mr. Davis was the officiating clergyman. It will be hereafter known as Forest 

Grove Church.” The village of Centreville 

mentioned in this article was a small settlement, which, by the early nineteenth century, had grown up along the road from 

Upper Marlboro to Long Old Fields.48

During the Civil War Union troops 

were stationed around the Methodist 

Church South, no doubt to the dismay of 

its pro-Southern congregation. The Washington defenses, a ring of fortifications 

that protected the District of Columbia, 

included several forts that stood east of 

the Anacostia River. The Federal soldiers 

encamped at the Methodist Church South 

probably were assigned either to one of 

these installations, such as Forts Baker, 

Wagner, or Ricketts, or to their outposts.49 

Descendants of area families later 

contended that Union troops barred the 

church’s minister from his own pulpit and 

that wartime sermons were given by an 
10

Dr. William G. Stewart with his wife, seated to his left, and a guest relaxing in the living room of his new country home,

Belle Chance, 1912.

Episcopal minister from Upper Marlboro. 

Another local tradition related that some 

of the Federal soldiers were buried in the 

church cemetery. The graveyard remains, 

but its stones do not bear out this claim. 

They show interments beginning in 1874 

(John E. Randall) and ending in 1938 

(William T. Beall).50

Encircled by this cemetery, today’s 

Chapel 2, Andrews Air Force Base, stands 

on the site of the Methodist Church South.51

Impressive oaks and other hardwood trees 

shade this handsome building and its 

cemetery. The churchyard burials include 

members of the Beall, Pumphrey, and 

other prominent local families.52

Belle Chance, a neighboring property of the Methodist Church South and its 

cemetery, became the object of a family 

dispute shortly after the Civil War. Charles 

F. Calvert died in September 1868, evidently without identifying an heir, and his 

brothers began a lengthy litigation over his 

estate. In 1877 an equity court awarded the 

Belle Chance house and adjoining land to 

the children of Charles F. Calvert’s brother 

George, and various parcels to other heirs.53

The Stewarts

In 1902 Marian Wilson, a niece of

Charles F. Calvert, sold the Belle Chance 

residence and 168 acres around it to Dr. 

William G. Stewart, a remarkably successful 

Washington, D.C., professional man. Born 

in 1857 in Cincinnati, Ohio, young Stewart 

grew up in Pennsylvania’s Lykens Valley 

and attended the University of Pennsylvania as a medical student. In 1881 he was 

graduated as a doctor of dental surgery and 

practiced dentistry for more than twenty 

years. Not content with one profession, in 

1894 Dr. Stewart entered Georgetown University Law School and three years later 

was graduated with a bachelor of laws 

degree and, in 1895, a master of laws.54

In 1898 Dr. Stewart was admitted to 

legal practice before the District of Columbia Supreme Court. He was by then a 

Washington resident and pursuing professional careers as both an attorney and 

dentist. His dental practice eventually 
11

dwindled, and Dr. Stewart increasingly 

gave his time to the law and to investments. 

In 1901 he erected the “Stewart Building” at 

the corner of 6th and D Streets in northwest 

Washington, D.C., and leased its offices 

largely to attorneys. The following year he 

purchased Belle Chance, and in 1903 he 

retired altogether from his dental practice.55

After Dr. Stewart bought the former 

Calvert house in 1902, he spent his happiest 

hours on the estate. Devoting considerable 

attention to its landscaping, he improved 

its already beautiful appearance. The 

doctor also experimented with mushroom 

planting in an area northeast of his house.56

Dr. Stewart loved the country life, 

particularly hunting and fishing. The largest of the three spring-fed ponds near the 

Belle Chance mansion, the one just southwest of it, became known as the owner’s 

“Old Fishing Hole.”57 The doctor’s wife 

Blanche evidently preferred living in the 

District of Columbia and resisted the move 

from the city, but she eventually became 

strongly attached to their new home in the 

Prince George’s countryside.58

After making his initial acquisition 

in 1902, Dr. Stewart continued to purchase 

acreage in the surrounding area. He eventually became the largest land owner in the 

region and referred to his entire estate—not 

just his home—as “Belle Chance.” His 

holdings stretched from Meadows to 

Camp Springs, an area that now forms part 

of Andrews Air Force Base.59

Meadows, a small African-American settlement surrounding a Freedmen’s 

Bureau school and a black Methodist 

church, developed south of Centreville 

during Reconstruction. The only vestige of 

this historic community is the graveyard of 

the Saint Luke’s (Niles) African Methodist 

Episcopal Church. The area today is a mix 

of residential, commercial, and government 

properties and lies immediately east of Andrews, toward the northern end of the base, 

about two miles from Belle Chance.60

Although the name “Camp 

Springs” has a military ring, it derived 

instead from the Methodist camp meetings 

held in that area during the nineteenth 

century. Local residents referred to it in 

the singular case, as “Camp Spring,” until 

as late as 1878.61 It remained a quiet rural 

locality until World War II or somewhat 

later.62 Today’s Camp Springs community lies just west of Andrews, beyond the 

parallel roads Branch Avenue (Maryland 

Route 5) and Old Branch Avenue.

A New Belle Chance

The house that Dr. Stewart had

purchased was a wood frame structure 

dating back to the Darcey family. In 1910 

one of the charming features of the Belle 

Chance residence, its isolated wooded 

location, abruptly became a liability. A 

forest fire burned the old Darcey house to 

the ground.63 

Dr. Stewart, determined that this 

episode would never be repeated, proposed to build a fireproof, all-concrete 

structure on the site of his burned out 

home. Although his wife, daughter, and 

neighbors expressed skepticism about 

his plan, the doctor persisted with it. He 

constructed one of the first poured-concrete 

houses in his region, using forms that were 

quite expensive by the standards of their 

day. Dr. Stewart’s chosen building material 

prevented future alterations, but proved its 

sturdiness and durability into the twentyfirst century.64

During the pre-World War I period, 

a number of American architects and 

builders advocated fireproof, all-concrete 

buildings. Shortly before fire destroyed the 

old Belle Chance, architect E.S. Child 

published his plans for “A Fire-Proof 

Cottage,” in the November 1909 issue of 

Shoppell’s Owners and Builders Magazine. He 

stood confident that “any owner who has 

experienced the disasters caused by a fire 

will thoroughly appreciate” the advantages 

of this design. “Every owner of a home 

knows,” Child warned, “that fire insurance 

only partially insures against loss.”65

The magazine followed up Child’s 

article with others promoting concrete 

construction. In December 1909 it featured 

“A Modern Indestructible Home,” and the 

following April, “Reinforced Concrete for 

Residence Construction.” In March 1910 

Child made another contribution, “A 

Substantial Fireproof House,” accompanied 
12

Dr. Stewart’s new all-concrete Belle Chance in 1912, under construction and during the summer and autumn. It was one

of the first buildings in the area designed to be completely fireproof.

with an illustration that generally resembles the present Belle Chance. It is possible 

that Dr. Stewart used plans from articles 

such as these for his new house.66

Workers finished the second Belle 

Chance in 1912. The handsome new 

house had elements of Colonial Revival 

and quasi-Spanish styles, two motifs 

that enjoyed popularity in early twentieth-century America. Its interior details 

were impressive, particularly in view of 

the limitations enforced by its one-foot 

thick concrete walls. An imposing central 

stairhall opened into two parlors to the 

north, and a large living room, later called 

the sun room, to the south. The interior 

trim featured simplified Colonial Revival 

detail. A handsome wooden mantel with 

shouldered molding, cushion frieze, and 

dentillated cornice highlighted each of the 

largest two rooms.67
13

Construction of the concrete retaining wall between Belle Chance and Dr. Stewart's Old Fishing Hole, one of the three

spring-fed ponds behind the property, 1920.
14

Within a few years after 1912, Dr. 

Stewart had three outbuildings constructed just northeast of the main house, and 

compatible with it. Farthest north from 

Belle Chance, a little less than 125 feet from 

it, workers completed a two-story side-gabled guest house. Like the main residence, 

it was built of concrete.68 A one-and-onehalf story hip-roof garage was constructed 

just south of the guest house, built of the 

same material and trimmed identically. 

Its two bay doors were decorated with 

striking geometric patterns. South of this 

building and nearest the main house, 

workers completed a one-story gable-roof 

garden shed, again in concrete, and with 

slightly flared eaves. All three outbuildings face a circular drive, which today is 

connected to Andrews’ North Perimeter 

Road by Maryland Avenue.69

The World War II Era

In 1929 local and national leaders 

discussed the need for a municipal airport to serve Washington, D.C. The area 

of today’s Andrews Air Force Base was 

considered as a possible site, and a survey 

was conducted. Then the issue died down 

until 1936, when Congress approved 

establishing an airport for the District of 

Columbia and authorized a District of 

Columbia Airport Commission to study 

possible locations.70

Dr. Stewart took an interest in 

this question and suggested to national 

lawmakers that part of his land would be 

suitable for the project. Some members of 

Congress were receptive to his proposal. 

Others, and a number of local residents, 

opposed it, and the idea was dropped.71

During the summer of 1937 the 

D.C. Airport Commission made its report, recommending the Camp Springs 

area for the proposed facility. The Senate 

approved the site, along with an express 

highway that would have connected the 

new airport with downtown Washington. 

The House did not act on this legislation, 

and attention shifted to Gravelly Point, a 

location endorsed by President Franklin 

D. Roosevelt. Work began there on what 

eventually became Washington National 

Airport, and Camp Springs seemingly 

faded from the picture.72

Dr. Stewart persisted in his efforts to interest the federal government 

in his property, however, presenting site 

proposals and offering some of his land 

for sale. The choice of the Gravelly Point 

location seemed to defeat him, but the 

situation changed dramatically after the 

Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and the 

United States entered World War II. The 

War Department then very much wanted 

to develop a military airfield close to the 

nation’s capital.73

On 26 August 1942 President 

Roosevelt directed Secretary of War Henry 

L. Stimson to purchase 3,200 acres in the 

Camp Springs area, which would become 

an Army Air Field. The acquisition included a few hamlets in the Maryland 

countryside—Centreville, Meadows, 

Woodyard—and many farms. More than 

100 families left their homes on 269 tracts, 

which ranged from small plots of bottomland to great estates with hundreds of 

productive acres.74

The displacement worked a hardship on many people. A local newspaper 

reflected: “Farms that for generations have 

afforded their owners with the necessities 

of life will be plowed up; country stores 

where overall-clad men gathered for 

the only social life they knew, will come 

down.” Dr. Stewart, who had lobbied 

Congress to purchase some of his land, 

was surprised to learn that the War Department was buying out all of it, including his Belle Chance mansion.75

Although some people resented the 

dislocation, the times promoted a mood of 

resignation. It was the first summer after 

Pearl Harbor, and Americans accepted 

rural land acquisition and other unpopular policies as wartime necessities. The 

same local paper, which had lamented the 

government’s decision, also reported that 

“the people of Camp Springs and Meadows aren’t bitter. They know the land 

they love must go, and are resigned.” This 

news article also cited in particular the 

example of seventy-six year old Ida Mayhew, who had lived on a little tract in the 

area for sixty-eight years: “There is a war 

to be won, and Mrs. Mayhew is not one to 

interfere with its progress.”76
15

(Above) Camp Springs Army Air Field, 1943; (below) Andrews Field and service emblem formed by flowers at the

installation's dedication, 1948. Mrs. Frank M. Andrews looks on.

Early Military Residents

The Stewarts left what had been

their longtime home in November 1942. 

Many years later Connie Yates, wife of General Ronald W. Yates and resident of Belle 

Chance between 1990 and 1992, reflected 

that it “must have been devastating” for 

Dr. Stewart “at the age of eighty-five to 

lose the house he had built and cherished 

for over thirty years.” Then she added: “I 

am sure, however, if Dr. Stewart could see 

how lovingly each resident has cared for 

his ‘dream’ in the years since, he would be 

pleased.”77

After the Stewarts departed, Farley 

and Janet R. Gannett occupied the house 

for about six months. Mr. Gannett was the 

president of Gannett, Easman and Fleming, an engineering firm near Harrisburg, 

Pennsylvania, that in March 1942 received 

the War Department’s contract to make 

a two-foot contour survey of the site for 

Camp Springs Army Air Field. After the 

company successfully completed this effort, 

the government then engaged it to design 

and supervise the construction of the new 

airfield, including its four 5,500-foot runways.78 

Since the other principal officers of 

Gannett, Easman, and Fleming were engaged elsewhere, Mr. Gannett personally 

took charge of the Camp Springs project 

in September 1942. Farley Gannett later 

recalled with pride the effort that his company sustained to build this important war-
16

Lieutenant General Frank M. Andrews, for whom

Andrews Air Force Base was named.

time airfield. “I stayed throughout the job,” 

he wrote in 1955, “and ours was the only 

organization that stayed complete from 

start to finish. The Engineering Officer was 

changed and the Contractor’s No. 1 man 

was changed twice, but we went on right 

through the job just as we started.”79

While Mr. Gannett supervised the 

extensive work at Camp Springs, he and his 

wife Janet lived in Belle Chance from November 1942 to April 1943. Mrs. Gannett 

was well aware of the Stewarts’ deep affection for their old home and was herself attracted to the residence. She wrote a poem 

about the stately house and its surroundings, which she presented to the Stewarts 

before Christmas 1942. “These sturdy walls 

have held you,” Janet Gannett’s work began, “With friendliness and warmth.” She 

and her husband left Belle Chance in April 

1943, its last civilian residents.80

Late in that month Captain Andrew W. Salter, a pursuit pilot who had 

been graduated from flying school in 1940, 

assumed responsibility as the initial commanding officer of Camp Springs Army 

Air Field. He and his wife became the 

first of a long line of military couples who 

made Belle Chance their home. The Salters’ 

tenure proved brief because Camp Springs 

soon was designated a control base, requiring a colonel as its commander. Colonel 

Michael E. McHugo transferred from 

Baltimore Army Air Field and succeeded 

Captain Salter, who remained on the installation as its base operations officer. In early 

November 1943 Salter left Camp Springs to 

take command of a P–38 squadron.81

Colonel Michael McHugo, fifty-one 

years old when he became Camp Springs’s 

commander on 1 July 1943, was a World 

War I veteran with extensive experience 

in balloon and dirigible operations. He 

and his wife Elsie lived in Belle Chance for 

about a year, when they moved to Selfridge 

Army Air Field, just northeast of Detroit. 

Although their tour proved short, no doubt 

the McHugos enjoyed their time in the 

beautiful house on the new airfield. The 

colonel shared Dr. Stewart’s interests in 

fishing and hunting and must have appreciated the ponds of Belle Chance and the stillrural area that surrounded the home.82

Colonel McHugo turned the base 

over to Colonel William L. Boyd on 6 July 

1944, a month after D–Day in Normandy. 

During Colonel Boyd’s tenure, the Camp 

Springs installation was renamed in honor 

of Lieutenant General Frank M. Andrews, 

one of the great founding leaders of the 

United States Air Force. General Andrews 

had commanded the European Theater of 

Operations from February 1943 until his 

death, in an aircraft accident in Iceland 

on the following 3 May.83 Had it not been 

for this tragedy, he, rather than General 

Dwight D. Eisenhower, would have commanded the American and Allied forces in 

the great campaigns of France and Germany during 1944 and 1945. On 7 February 

1945 the Camp Springs facility formally 

became Andrews Field.84

On 20 May 1945 Colonel Boyd was 

succeeded by his deputy, Lieutenant Colonel Robert N. Maupin. This thirty-yearold officer had compiled a commendable 

wartime career, which included delivering 

fighters to America’s then-ally the Soviet 

Union and serving as a base commander at 

Nome and in the Aleutian Islands, Alaska. 

Lieutenant Colonel Maupin and his wife 

Nancy lived at Belle Chance only briefly, 
17

Belle Chance

These sturdy walls have held you.

With friendliness and warmth,

They gave me,a stranger,

Greetings, strong and clear,

They speak of love and laughter;

Of dignity, and grace,

Of sorrow, without fear.

The wind sweeps over the hills above;

The sun is mirrored in the lake,

The cedars bend so quietly,

As if to touch the ground they love;

They seem to bringa message

of all this means to you;

How much we love it, too!

	 	 	 Dedicated to the Stewart Family

	 	 	 15 December 1942

until 12 November 1945, when he was suc-

ceeded by Colonel Curtis D. Sluman.85

Colonel Sluman, the last base com-

mander to reside at Belle Chance, also had 

a short tenure there. A bomber pilot with 

combat experience over North Africa, Slu-

man was thirty-four years old when he 

reported to Andrews Field from III Bomber 

Command Headquarters at MacDill Field, 

Tampa, Florida, where he had been director 

of operations and training. He and his wife 

Anna lived in Belle Chance until October 

1946, when the house became the residence 

of General George C. Kenney, commander 

of Strategic Air Command. The Slumans 

remained at Andrews until the following 

June, when the colonel received a staff as-

signment at Headquarters Air Transport 

Command in Washington, D.C.86

On 18 September 1947 the United 

States Air Force became an independent 

military service. A long, distinguished chap-

ter in the history of Belle Chance closed and 

a new, hopeful one began.
18
19

In 1991 General Ronald W. Yates, the last commander of Air 

Force Systems Command, discussed what Belle Chance has meant to 

its residents over the years. “Almost inevitably, when I speak with a 

former commander,” General Yates reflected, “one of his first questions 

is ‘How are you enjoying Belle Chance?’ . . . I know that each commander has particularly enjoyed some special aspect of Belle Chance.”1

Overhead view of Belle

Chance’sentrance, 2000. The

thick stands of treessurrounding the houseshield it from

the activity at a very busy

Andrews Air Force Base.
20

The Major Commands

From 1946 until 1992 the installation known first as Andrews Field and 

then as Andrews Air Force Base provided 

the headquarters for a series of major 

commands of the United States Air Force. 

These organizations were the Strategic 

Air Command, 1946–1948; the Military 

Air Transport Service, 1948–1958; the Air 

Research and Development Command, 

1958–1961, and its direct successor, Air 

Force Systems Command, 1961–1992. 

Throughout these years, the commander 

of each of these major commands lived in 

Belle Chance.

Strategic Air Command

The first commander of a major 

command to reside at Belle Chance was 

General George C. Kenney, who lived 

there with his wife Alice from October 

1946 until October 1948. He was born in 

Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, while his parents 

were visiting Canada. He was a student at 

the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 

when the United States entered World War 

I. While serving with, and later commanding, the 91st Aero Squadron on the Western Front, he flew seventy-five combat 

sorties in the Toul and Meuse-Argonne 

sectors and shot down two German aircraft. During the interwar period thenCaptain Kenney was assigned to the Air 

Corps Tactical School, where he became 

an advocate of attack aviation, and later to 

the Chief of the Air Corps’ Plans Division 

office, where he championed an independent air force.2

General Kenney was well known 

as an innovator. He developed ideas for 

low- level strikes, machine gun mounting, 

bullet-proof glass, bomber power turrets, 

better oxygen systems, parachute bombs, 

and “skip-bombing.” His motto was 

“Hell, let’s try it.”3

During World War II General Kenney became “MacArthur’s Airman”: He 

commanded the Fifth Air Force and all 

Allied air forces in the Southwest Pacific. 

As air commander, he made air power an 

integral part of General MacArthur’s strategy and operations. General Kenney’s 

planning for the Battle of the Bismarck 

Sea led to the sinking of sixteen Japanese 

ships. General MacArthur, one historian 

pointed out, “characterized Kenney as 

born to be a pirate, and when the fighting 

was over, said that no air commander of 

World War II surpassed George Kenney as 

a combat leader.”4

As commander of Strategic Air 

Command, General Kenney lived at Belle 

Chance until October 1948. On the nineteenth of that month he was succeeded 

in this assignment by Lieutenant General 

Curtis E. LeMay. That November Headquarters SAC moved from Andrews to 

Offutt Air Force Base, Bellevue, Nebraska, 

where it would remain for the duration of 

the command’s history.5

Military Air Transport Service

Belle Chance did not remain vacant, however, for the headquarters of 

another major command replaced that of 

SAC. This was the Military Air Transport 

Service, the June 1948 successor to the Air 

Transport Command. Charged with the 

management of all strategic airlift operations, MATS quickly answered an enormous challenge. Just twenty-five days 

after the new command was formed, the 

Soviet Union blockaded West Berlin, causing the Allies to mount the dramatically 

successful Berlin Airlift of June 1948 to 

October 1949.6

Lieutenant General Laurence S. 

Kuter, who helped organize MATS and 

became its first commander, lived at Belle 

Chance with his wife Ethel from 1948 until 

1951. By that time General Kuter had 

already served a distinguished career, and 

General George C. Kenney,

who, as the first commander of Strategic Air

Command, resided in Belle

Chance from 1946 to 1948.
21

The old corn crib, a rustic backdrop for many flower and vegetable gardens grown throughout the years at 

Belle Chance.

Lieutenant General Laurence S. Kuter, who

as the first commander 

of the Military Air Transport Service,

resided in Belle Chance

from 1948 to 1951.

great responsibilities remained ahead of 

him. He had been a co-author of AWPD–1, 

the air plan that first defined how strategic 

air power would be used in World War II’s 

European theater, and was promoted directly from lieutenant colonel to brigadier 

general at the age of thirty-six. His wartime 

assignments included commanding the 1st 

Bombardment Wing of the Eighth Air Force 

and later the Allied Tactical Air Forces in 

North Africa, serving as assistant chief of the 

Air Staff for plans and combat operations, 

and as the deputy commander of Army Air 

Forces in the Pacific. “The apogee of Kuter’s 

wartime achievement,” Major General 

Haywood S. Hansell observed, “came in 

the spring of 1944, when he represented the 

ailing General [H.H. “Hap”] Arnold at the 

international conferences at Malta and Yalta. 

. . . It is hard to imagine a higher step for a 

young airman” than attending “the crucial 

meeting of great nations fighting a global war.”7

General Kuter held an extraordinarily diverse range of senior positions 

during his thirty-five year career. After serving as first MATS commander, 

he went on to head the Air University, 

1953–1955. Promoted to four-star general, 

he commanded the Far East Air Forces, 

1955–1959, and in his last assignment was 

the commander in chief of the North Atlantic Air Defense Command.8

General Kuter and his wife greatly 

enjoyed their time at Belle Chance. Mrs. 

Kuter took on a number of projects around 

the house and grounds. To ensure that 

her floor coverings would fit the available 

space, she cut all of her own carpeting. 

Mrs. Kuter avidly pursued gardening 

and appreciated the opportunities that 

Belle Chance offered for her pastime. She 

cultivated a beautiful collection of roses 

and, next to a corn crib about 170 feet east 

of the house, she maintained a successful 

vegetable garden.9 (The origin of that corn 

crib remains a mystery. A 1995 state survey characterized it as “of recent vintage”; 

some Belle Chance residents believe it is 

older than the Stewart house.)10

Another Belle Chance mystery 

dated at least to the Kuters’ tenure: the 

tradition that the house has been haunted. 
22

Lieutenant General

Joseph Smith, the second

commander of Military

Air Transport Service and

resident of Belle Chance

from 1952 to 1957.

Ethel Kuter reported that she and her 

husband believed three ghosts lived there 

with them. One rattled the windows, 

another rang a bell, and a third bumped 

in the attic. One of these alleged specters 

was called “Aunt Maude,” and another 

“Uncle George,” the names of members of 

the Stewart family.11 

Some forty years after the Kuters had left Belle Chance, the ghost story 

remained in circulation. Writing in 1991, 

Connie Yates, the wife of General Ronald 

W. Yates, acknowledged that “there was 

an occasional house aide who refused to 

go to the attic.” But she also dismissed the 

supernatural lore of Belle Chance with a 

good-natured comment. With “modernday jets landing on the flight line and the 

[Washington, D.C.] Beltway just a quarter 

of a mile away,” Mrs. Yates remarked, “I 

think the ghosts have given up.”12

Long after her years at Belle 

Chance, Mrs. Kuter also recalled a more 

mundane feature of the property, a road 

that connected the northern end of Dr. 

Stewart’s Old Fishing Hole with the Andrews flightline. A holly hedge decorated 

the stretch of the roadway that ran along 

the pond. The trace of a section of the old 

road survived into the early twenty-first 

century, and its path still can be easily 

followed. It starts south from the parking 

lot on the east side of the house and then 

swings west to pass along the northern 

edge of the Old Fishing Hole. The holly 

hedge that Mrs. Kuter remembered has 

been replaced by a row of closely spaced, 

mature hardwoods.13

The Kuters left Belle Chance when 

the general was succeeded as MATS commander by Lieutenant General Joseph 

Smith. General Smith and his wife Anna 

enjoyed a long tenure in the residence, 

from 1952 until 1957. The second MATS 

commander was a 1923 graduate of the 

United States Military Academy, flew 

routes as an airmail pilot, and served as 

commandant of cadets at Kelly Field, 

San Antonio, Texas, during the interwar 

years.14 

After the United States entered 

World War II, then-Colonel Smith served 

as a War Department plans officer. In 

November 1943, as a member of the Joint 

Chiefs of Staff’s Joint War Plans Committee, he accompanied President Franklin 

D. Roosevelt to the Cairo Conference. He 

also served in India as chief of staff of XX 

Bomber Command and, late in the war, at 

Headquarters Eighth Air Force in Okinawa.15

On 21 August 1947 then-Colonel 

Smith assumed command of Wiesbaden 

Military Post, Germany, located just west 

of Frankfurt and about 275 miles from Berlin. It was a Spartan facility that, only two 

years earlier, had been a Luftwaffe fighter 

base. On 11 June 1948 he was promoted to 

brigadier general and on the twenty-ninth, 

as the Berlin Airlift was getting underway, 

Lieutenant General Curtis E. LeMay, the 

commander-in-chief of United States Air 

Forces in Europe, appointed him the temporary commander of what was emerging 

daily as a historically significant operation. Serving in this crucial role for about 

one month, General Smith and his staff 

established many of the basic procedures 

that made the Berlin Airlift a resounding 

success.16

General Smith received his second 

star in 1949 and his third three years later. 

He and his wife lived at Belle Chance 

throughout the mid-1950s. In 1957 the 

headquarters of this major command 

moved to Scott Air Force Base, Belleville, 

Illinois, near Saint Louis, Missouri. The 

descendant of Headquarters MATS, Headquarters Air Mobility Command, remains 

there today. The Smiths left Andrews with 

the move of the command headquarters, 

and the general retired the following year.17
23

Concrete decorative retaining walls lining the edge of Dr. Stewart’s Old Fishing Hole, 1999.

Late in 1951, before the Smiths 

moved into Belle Chance, Air Force Chief 

of Staff General Hoyt S. Vandenberg approved an extensive remodeling project for 

the house, which was then thirty-nine years 

old. Workers repaired the roof, replaced 

the electrical wiring, and modernized the 

kitchen. This 1952 renovation also included the installation of a second bathroom 

upstairs and the “slip covering” of the two 

fireplaces: Mantels were added, to give 

them a more conventional appearance.18 

Air Research and

Development Command/

Air Force Systems Command

After the Smiths departed, Belle 

Chance again did not stand vacant long, 

for another major command soon made 

its headquarters at Andrews Air Force 

Base. This time it was the Air Research 

and Development Command. It had been 

established in 1950 to implement the 

recommendations by Dr. Louis Ridenour’s 

and Major General Orvil Anderson’s study 

groups, and other visionaries, that the 

U.S. Air Force should have a major command that would focus on the research 

and development of aircraft and the many 

other complex systems so important to the 

post-World War II service. ARDC made its 

first permanent headquarters at WrightPatterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio, 

then moved to Baltimore, Maryland, in 

June 1951, and eventually to Andrews in 

January 1958.20

Lieutenant General Samuel E. Anderson was the sixth commander of ARDC 

and the first of twelve Air Research and 

Development Command and Air Force 

Systems Command commanders who 

resided at Belle Chance. The stately home 

would be associated briefly with ARDC 

and then for thirty-one years with its direct 

successor, AFSC. General Anderson and 

his wife Frances moved into Belle Chance 

After the Smiths moved in, Mrs. 

Smith discovered that Dr. Stewart’s Old 

Fishing Hole had developed an unhealthy 

number of eels. General Smith had it partially drained, fertilized, and stocked with 

bass and bluegill fingerlings. For decades 

afterward the pond provided a relaxing 

fishing spot.19
24

General Samuel E. Anderson, builder of

Air Research and Development Command and

resident in Belle Chance

from 1958 to 1959.

in January 1958 and remained until the 

following year, when he was promoted to 

four-star rank and named commander of 

the Air Materiel Command.21

A Greensboro, North Carolina native and a West Point graduate, then-Major 

Anderson was assigned to the Office of 

the Assistant Chief of Staff, Headquarters 

Air Force, when the United States entered 

World War II. In the Pacific theater, he 

received the Silver Star for gallantry in 

action in the vicinity of Port Moresby, New 

Guinea, in June 1942. In the European theater, then-Colonel Anderson commanded 

the Third Bombardment Wing (Medium) 

and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for combat missions he flew in 

July and August 1943.22

After the war General Anderson 

was a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s 

Joint Strategic Survey Committee, worked 

in Headquarters USAF, and commanded 

the Eighth Air Force. In May 1953, the 

month before the Korean War ended, he 

was promoted to lieutenant general and 

was named commanding general of the 

Fifth Air Force. A year later he became 

the director of the Office of the Secretary 

of Defense’s Weapons Systems Evaluation 

Group.23

During his tenure as commander of 

the Air Research and Development Command, General Anderson set in motion 

a sequence of events that led to a fundamental change in the way the Air Force 

organized and conducted its research and 

development efforts. He assumed command on 1 August 1957 and later that year 

proposed to Air Force Chief of Staff General Thomas D. White that a panel of distinguished scientists review the Air Force’s 

and ARDC’s organization and procedures 

for research and development. The result 

was the Stever Committee, a group of nine 

prominent leaders of science and industry, 

chaired by Dr. H. Guyford Stever, a physics professor who was the chief scientist of 

the Air Force and later the chairman of the 

Scientific Advisory Board.24

In June 1958, after seven months of 

study, the group presented its findings to 

General White. The Stever Report advocated in general a decentralizing of the 

civilian and military acquisition bureaucracies. In the specific case of ARDC, it 

recommended reorganizing the command 

along functional lines.25 

In November 1958 General Anderson established a working group within 

his own command that reviewed the Stever Report and provided its own recommendations. By the time this committee 

finished its work, its senior officer was 

awaiting the orders that would make him 

the commander of Air Materiel Command, 

an organization whose perspective on 

research and development organizational 

issues differed sharply from ARDC’s. 

Further, General Anderson’s successor no 

doubt would have his own ideas about 

this fundamentally important subject. The 

commander did the appropriate thing 

under the circumstances, ordering the 

working group to continue its explorations 

until after the new ARDC leader reported. 

When General Anderson left Andrews 

Air Force Base for Headquarters AMC, he 

had begun a historic reorganization of Air 

Force research and development.26

Since Belle Chance had received 

an extensive renovation just before the 

arrival of General and Mrs. Joseph Smith, 

it needed little refurbishing during the 

Andersons’ years in the residence. During this period the house featured a white 

exterior, a gray roof, awnings vertically 

striped in light and dark gray, and a low 

white picket fence that decorated the 

front walkway and enclosed the lawn. 

Early in 1958 the building’s vertical frame 

windows were replaced with sash units, 

which accommodated Venetian blinds and 

air conditioners.27 

General Anderson’s successor at 

Belle Chance and ARDC, Lieutenant General Bernard A. Schriever, stood among 

the giants in the history of the Cold War 

Air Force. General Schriever was born in 
25

General Bernard A.

Schriever, who, as second

commander of Air Force

Research and Development Command and first 

commander of Air Force

Systems Command, enjoyed

the longest tenure in Belle

Chance, from 1959 to 1966.

The entrance to Belle Chance, after a major renovation of the home in 1952.

Bremen, Germany. He was graduated from 

Texas A&M University in 1931, joined the 

army, and completed pilot training at Kelly 

Field, Texas, in 1933.28 Out of the service 

briefly during the 1930s, he returned to 

duty as an engineering officer and test pilot, earned a master’s degree in aeronautical engineering at Stanford University, and 

flew sixty-three B–17 combat sorties in the 

Southwest Pacific.29

After World War II General Schriever worked with Dr. Theodore Von Karman and others to build connections 

between the Air Force and the scientific 

community that served the nation so well 

during the Cold War, and beyond. 

Assigned to the Air Staff during the early 

1950s, he oversaw the work of the then 

relatively new RAND Corporation. In 

mid-1954 he became the manager of the 

Air Force’s intercontinental ballistic missile 

program. His calm and persuasive personality and his innovative ideas animated 

the development of the Atlas, Thor, Titan, 

and Minuteman missiles.30 

While working with the Atlas test 

program, General Schriever introduced an 

important management strategy, “concurrency.” Driven by competition 

with the Soviet Union, the American ballistic missile programs of the 1950s urgently needed many systems—test facilities, 

launchers, training efforts, and specialized 

equipment—which did not exist. General 

Schriever addressed this issue by applying 

concurrency, whereby the separate elements of a major program would be developed in sequence, each to be completed as 

needed.31 

General Schriever championed a 

number of other innovations. He insisted 

on the greatest interchangeability possible 

for the subsystems among different missiles, and on having two contractors at 

work on each major component of a program. He emphasized using ground and 

static tests to avoid cost overruns, using 

the computer technology available in his 

day to improve the management of large 

projects.32

When Lieutenant General Schriever 

became the commander of ARDC in April 

1959, an important question had been 

under discussion for some time: What 
26

Entrance of Belle Chance during General Schriever’s tenure.

would be the most effective organization 

for the Air Force’s research and development efforts? General Schriever proposed 

that a single Air Force major command 

be responsible for research and development, production, and procurement, and 

that a separate and equal one be devoted 

to logistic support. Headquarters AMC 

opposed this idea, the Air Staff offered a 

compromise plan, and discussions continued for two more years.33

In January 1961 President John F. 

Kennedy’s administration took office and 

assigned a priority to space programs. 

Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell 

Gilpatric proposed assigning the Air Force 

the responsibility for the research and development of all military space programs, 

contingent on the service’s resolving its 

own research and development organizational question. Air Force Chief of Staff 

General Thomas D. White promptly decided the issue in favor of General Schriever’s 

position. In April 1961 ARDC became the 

Air Force Systems Command and AMC 

the Air Force Logistics Command.34 

Lieutenant General Schriever 

became the first AFSC commander and 

was promoted to full general in July 1961. 

During its early years, which fell during 

the Kennedy administration, the command gave considerable attention to the 

research and development of weapons and 

ordnance for conventional wars, which 

had been overshadowed by nuclear and 

strategic systems during the 1950s. Many 

of the programs that AFSC developed in 

the early 1960s would later benefit the Air 

Force during the Vietnam War.35

In 1963 General Schriever directed 

Project Forecast, which studied the technologies of future air warfare and helped 

the Air Force determine what systems it 

would need during the period from the 

late 1960s to the late 1970s. It included 

such visionary concepts as a long-range, 

large-capacity cargo aircraft, which eventually emerged as the C–5A Galaxy, and 

highly accurate precision-guided munitions, which would serve the nation so 

well during the Vietnam and Gulf wars.36 

Project Forecast, wrote one Air Force 

historian, “was one of General Schriever’s 

most important contributions to national 

defense.”37 

Summing up General Schriever’s 

achievements, another historian contended: “No one did more to harness 

academic science to military objectives 

than Gen. Bernard A. Schriever, . . . [a] 

distinguished Air Force R&D leader who 

brought the American ICBM force to fruition and almost single-handedly established a USAF command for weapons 

acquisition.” In a speech he gave shortly 

before his 1966 retirement, General Schriever praised the kind of innovative thinking 

that he himself exemplified. “The world 

has an ample supply of people,” he told a 

meeting of the Arnold Air Society, “who 

can always come up with a dozen good 

reasons why a new idea will not work and 

should not be tried, but the people who 

produce progress are a breed apart. They 

have the imagination, the courage, and the 

persistence to find solutions.”38 

General Schriever and his wife 

Dora enjoyed seven years at Belle Chance, 

in the longest tenure of any of its military 

residents. Mrs. Schriever was the daughter of Lieutenant General George H. Brett, 

and the couple’s 3 January 1938 wedding 
27

One of the horses quartered by General and Mrs. Schriever in a stable, which stood in some woods near the old corn crib. Barbara Schriever and “Razzle,” 1965.

ceremony had taken place in the home of 

then-Brigadier General Henry H. “Hap” 

Arnold. The Schrievers’ daughters Dodie 

(age eighteen when the family moved into 

the home) and Barbara (age ten) and the 

general’s mother, Elizabeth Betzelmann, 

and her husband Hans lived with them 

at Belle Chance. Many years later Dora 

Brett-Schriever remembered: “The house 

was unusual, being an old farm house of 

cement . . . . The separate guest house was 

convenient for General Schriever’s mother 

to live in.”39 

The Schrievers used their long 

tenure at Belle Chance to good advantage, 

completing a number of major projects. 

They had a modern kitchen added next 

to the original one. It featured massive 

commercial ranges, which expedited the 

preparation of all the food needed for the 

many social functions that the couple hosted. “The small kitchen was inadequate for 

large entertainments,” Dora Brett-Schriever recalled, “such as the armed forces 

picnics to entertain Congress and other 

important people. So Major General William Leonard helped me build a new large 

kitchen.”40

Conveniently near what had 

become a double kitchen was the dining 

room, where the Shrievers could seat sixteen guests around a large circular table. 

Among the couple’s visitors were the 

world famous aviator Brigadier General 

Charles A. Lindbergh, the members of the 

Scientific Advisory Board, Mrs. Schriever’s 

parents Lieutenant General and Mrs. 

Brett, and other dignitaries. A particularly 

notable occasion came during the second 

year the family lived at Belle Chance, 

when Dodie Schriever was married.41

In another major project the Schrievers glassed in the screen porch at the 

south end of the house. This renovation, 

as Dora Brett-Schriever later explained, 

took off “the French doors from either side 

of the fireplace” and created “a wonderful 

area for entertaining, between the rooms.” 

The couple also extensively remodeled the 

garage, adding an upstairs suite for General Shriever’s driver. Two shed dormers 

were opened through the west side of the 

roof, allowing light to enter through louvered windows. This loft apartment still 
28

General James Ferguson,

commmander, AFSC,

from 1966 to 1970.

remains a feature of the garage.42

The Schrievers enjoyed horseback 

riding, and Mrs. Schriever was an accomplished equestrienne. The couple maintained a small stable in a wooded area east 

of the corn crib, and when the workhands 

cleaned it, they shoveled the manure 

into the flower-planting areas around the 

guest house.43 Beyond the stable, along 

the border of the Andrews airfield, Mrs. 

Schriever planted about three dozen trees. 

The horse-building was lost when, as Mrs. 

Yates explained many years later, “some 

ambitious aides . . . tore the stable down 

before the preservationists had a chance to 

intervene.”44

General Schriever also liked to play 

golf and maintained a putting green on 

the grounds, convenient to the house. For 

many years after his Belle Chance residency, this feature of the lawn continued 

to draw good-natured remarks from the 

general’s successors. General Robert T. 

Marsh later recalled that whenever the Air 

Force Senior Statesmen gathered during 

the 1980s, General Schriever invariably 

took a ribbing about his putting green.45

General Schriever’s successor, 

General James Ferguson, served as the 

second commander of Air Force Systems 

Command from 1966 until 1970. General 

Ferguson had one of the most interesting 

personal backgrounds among the AFSC 

commanders: He was born in Smyrna, 

Turkey, of British parents; attended elementary school in Scotland; settled with 

his family in Whittier, California; and became a naturalized United States citizen in 

1930. He enlisted in the Army Air Corps 

four years later.46

A first lieutenant at the time of 

Pearl Harbor, General Ferguson attained 

the rank of colonel by the end of World 

War II. During that conflict, he served as 

the executive officer of the 20th Pursuit 

Group and as commanding officer of the 

337th Fighter Group. He also organized 

and commanded the 405th Fighter-Bomber 

Group. On the night the Normandy invasion began, then-Colonel Ferguson was a 

senior air controller, and later he helped 

plan for the invasion of the Japanese home 

islands.47

Then-Colonel Ferguson was the 

assistant to the vice commander of the 

Far East Air Forces when the Korean War 

began, and he later became Headquarters 

FEAF’s assistant deputy for operations. 

Promoted to brigadier general in April 

1951, he was vice commander of the Fifth 

Air Force from June of that year until February 1952.48

In July 1955 General Ferguson 

began a series of research and development assignments that would carry him 

to the end of his distinguished career. For 

four years he served first as the deputy, 

and later the director, of requirements in 

Headquarters USAF’s, Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Development. General 

Ferguson then became the ARDC vice 

commander in 1959; Headquarters USAF’s 

DCS for research and development in 

1961; and the AFSC commander in 1966.49

General Ferguson’s four-year tenure as the Systems Command commander, 

during the late 1960s, covered a period 

marked by major changes in the way the 

Air Force organized its research and development efforts. An important example involved an increase in the responsibilities of 

AFSC’s laboratories. In this area, Air Force 

Chief of Staff General John P. McConnell 

and General Ferguson both believed that 

Headquarters AFSC should be given more 

control over the basic scientific research 

that the service supported. They agreed 

that the Air Force Office of Aerospace 

Research, a separate operating agency, 

which since 1961 had been responsible 

for all of the service’s laboratories and a 

number of other research facilities, should 

be inactivated and its role transferred to 

AFSC’s Director of Laboratories. In 1970 

the AFOAR stood down, and its functions 

were assigned to the Systems Command 
29

General George S. Brown,

commander, AFSC, from

1970 to 1973. He was 

one of two residents of

Belle Chance to become

Air Force Chief of Staff

and the only one to become

Chairman of the Joint

Chiefs of Staff.

Director of Laboratories; the Air Force Office of Scientific Research was established; 

and four laboratories came under the purview of Headquarters AFSC.50

Another example involved dramatic changes in the process for acquiring major weapons. In 1969 Deputy Secretary of 

Defense David Packard introduced sweeping reforms in this area. That summer, he, 

Air Force Chief of Staff General John D. 

Ryan, Secretary of the Air Force Robert C. 

Seamans, Air Force Under Secretary John 

McLucas, and General Ferguson met to 

discuss how Secretary Packard’s initiatives 

could be applied to the acquisition of the 

F–15 fighter. These senior leaders agreed 

that the F–15 program should be greatly 

decentralized, its Program Element Monitor transferred from Headquarters USAF 

to Headquarters AFSC, and a general officer appointed its director.51

General Ferguson instructed the 

newly created System Program Offices to 

prepare Program Assessment Reviews, 

which would “focus intensive top management attention . . . on our important 

programs.” Following the initial case of 

the F–15, the Air Force established PEM 

offices in Headquarters AFSC for the 

F–111 fighter, Minuteman missile, C–5A 

transport, and many other major systems, 

leaving only “focal points” for them at 

Headquarters USAF.52 These reforms of the 

late 1960s shaped the acquisition process 

for most of the remainder of the Cold War.

During the Fergusons’ tenure 

at Belle Chance, no great changes were 

needed in the house, in view of the major 

renovations their predecessors had just 

completed. The couple planted a wide 

variety of trees on the grounds, including 

some impressive acacias. Roberta Ferguson, a native of Cincinnati, Ohio,53 particularly enjoyed the double kitchen that the 

Schrievers had added. She was also fond 

of the dining room, which faced the patio 

on the west side of the house. Mrs. Ferguson used a built-in cabinet in the room 

to display her collection of candle holders 

and fine art objects.54

General Ferguson’s successor at 

Belle Chance, General George S. Brown, 

was one of two residents of the home who 

became the Air Force Chief of Staff, and 

the only one to serve as Chairman of the 

Joint Chiefs of Staff. By the time General 

and Mrs. Brown moved into Belle Chance 

in 1970, he already had recorded a distinguished career. He was graduated from 

West Point in 1941 and during World War 

II flew B–24 missions with the 93rd Bomb 

Group. As a lieutenant colonel and colonel, Brown directed operations for the 2nd 

Bomb Division, and he later received the 

Distinguished Service Cross for his role in 

the historic Ploesti raid of August 1943.55

During most of the first year of the 

Korean War, then-Colonel Brown commanded the 62nd Troop Carrier Group 

at McChord Air Force Base, Washington, 

which provided airlift to the embattled 

Asian peninsula. Later, during the same 

conflict, he served as assistant director and 

then director of operations of the Fifth Air 

Force. After the Korean War then-Colonel Brown commanded the 3525th Pilot 

Training Wing at Williams Air Force Base, 

Arizona.56

During the late 1950s and early 

1960s, General Brown held important assignments in Washington, D.C. In 1957 he 

became the executive officer of Air Force 

Chief of Staff General Thomas D. White. 

Two years later General Brown was named 

the military assistant to the deputy secretary of defense, and then to the secretary 

of defense. In this last postion he served 

Thomas S. Gates, Jr., and Robert S. McNamara, of the Eisenhower and Kennedy 

administrations.57

From 1966 to 1968 General Brown 

served as the assistant to the Chairman 

of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and from 1968 

to 1970, as commander of the Seventh 

Air Force and the deputy commander for 

air operations of the Military Assistance 

Command Vietnam. “When we had staff 

meetings in Vietnam,” recalled General 
30

General Samuel C. Phillips,

commander, AFSC, from

1973 to 1975.

Brown’s aide, Major Jack Cremins, “General Brown was patient and could listen 

to everything you had to say, even if you 

were blowing smoke. Then when you got 

through, he’d ask a couple of questions 

which, if you didn’t know what you were 

talking about, would quietly make the 

point that you weren’t prepared.” After 

his assignment with the Seventh Air Force 

and MACV, General Brown became commander of Air Force Systems Command in 

1970.58 

General Brown brought his practical experience to this assignment, and he 

interacted well with the Air Force’s operational commanders. General William W. 

Momyer, who headed Tactical Air Command during the time, stated that General 

Brown “did an outstanding job.” “He was 

effective in working with major commanders,” General Momyer contended, “always 

a difficult position because operational 

commanders are pressing for shorter term 

needs, whereas people in research and 

development are pressing for longer term 

requirements. George did a good job of 

working with SAC, TAC, and with overseas commanders.”59

General Brown continued the 

acquisition reforms that General Ferguson 

had begun as part of the Packard initiatives. He successfully applied his Vietnam 

War experience to the weapons procurement process. During General Brown’s 

tenure at Systems Command, a Command 

Systems Acquisition Review Council was 

established to track the progress of potential, new, and mature programs. It was 

also during the early 1970s that AFSC, in 

an effort to better anticipate the financial 

variables in research and development 

projects, introduced “Should Cost” estimates. Based on the independent studies of government experts, they made it 

unnecessary to rely solely on evaluations 

done by contractors.60

While General Brown pursued 

these and other initiatives, he and his 

wife Alice greatly enjoyed Belle Chance, 

although their time there proved short. 

General Robert T. Marsh later recalled: 

“General Brown just loved that place—he 

maybe more than many.” The Browns’ 

tenure at Belle Chance ended in 1973, 

when the general became the Air Force 

Chief of Staff. General Brown was so 

fond of the Andrews residence, General 

Marsh believed, that had he been able to, 

he would have remained there rather than 

live at Fort Myer.61 

General Brown made the move 

from Belle Chance and was soon to make 

another. In 1974 he began serving as the 

eighth Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of 

Staff, the second Air Force officer to hold 

that assignment. This change of duty 

required a far shorter move: from Quarters 

Seven, the home of the Air Force Chief of 

Staff, to Quarters Six, the Chairman’s residence, the building right next door on Fort 

Myer’s Grant Avenue.62 

During the brief time the Browns 

spent at Belle Chance, James “Louis” Proctor was closely associated with the family. 

Mr. Proctor had been well known in Air 

Force circles since 1957, the year he had become the chauffeur of Lieutenant General 

Joseph Smith. Eventually he would serve 

thirteen ARDC and AFSC commanders, 

from General Smith during the Sputnik 

era to General Yates and the deactivation 

of AFSC.

Highly regarded by all of these 

senior officers, Louis Proctor developed 

a particularly strong relationship with 

the Brown family. When General Brown 

became Air Force Chief of Staff, he invited 

Mr. Proctor to continue driving for him; 

Louis modestly declined and remained 

the AFSC commander’s chauffeur. In the 

spring of 1978, late in General Brown’s 

tour as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of 

Staff, he was stricken with a fast-moving 

cancer. That autumn the general was hospitalized at Malcolm Grow Medical Center 

at Andrews Air Force Base. The nursing 

staff was instructed that only immediate 

family members would be permitted to 
31

visit the patient, with a single exception: 

his former chauffeur. On 5 December General Brown passed away, and Louis Proctor honored his request that he drive the 

Brown family to the memorial service.63

General Brown’s successor at 

Headquarters Systems Command was 

General Samuel C. Phillips, who served a 

long career that was rich in research and 

development experience. Born in Springerville, Arizona, in 1921, he earned a B.S. 

in electrical engineering from the University of Wyoming in 1942 and a master’s 

in the same field from the University of 

Michigan in 1950. During World War II he 

served two combat tours with the 364th 

Fighter Group, an Eighth Air Force unit 

based in England.64

For six years beginning in 1950, 

then-Major Phillips gained reasearch and 

development experience as an office chief 

at the Engineering Division at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio; as an electronics officer during atomic experiments on 

Eniwetok; and as a project officer for the 

B–52 bomber and the Falcon and Bomarc 

missile programs. He served in several 

SAC assignments and was promoted to 

brigadier general in 1961, during his fouryear tenure as director of the Minuteman 

program.65

It was General Phillips’ experience with this project that led the National 

Aeronautics and Space Administration to 

borrow him from the Air Force in October 

1964 to serve as a deputy program director 

for Project Apollo. The effort to put a man 

on the moon was then in its infancy. Within ten months, General Phillips became 

the Apollo program director. He “brought 

skills in configuration management and 

logistics management,” one historian later 

noted, “that had been acquired during the 

Minuteman effort.” After the historic first 

landing on the moon in July 1969, General Phillips left NASA Headquarters and 

returned to the Air Force.66

For the next three years he commanded AFSC’s Space and Missile Systems Organization in Los Angeles, California. In 1972 General Phillips became the 

director of the National Security Agency, 

and the following year he reported to Andrews Air Force Base as the fourth Systems 

Command commander.67

When General Phillips began his 

assignment at Headquarters AFSC, major 

issues still remained in the wake of the 

Packard reforms. The new commander 

favored the decentralization that his predecessors had initiated, and he expressed 

concern that if the Office of the Secretary 

of Defense conducted detailed program 

reviews, insisted on rigid milestones, and 

issued overly precise guidance, the trend 

of reform might be reversed and replaced 

by more centralized authority over weapons acquisition at high levels of the Defense Department. It proved impossible to 

reduce the amount of external control over 

major procurements, but General Phillips succeeded in putting in place several 

management innovations within his command. In addition to the Program Assessment Reviews introduced during General 

Ferguson’s watch, AFSC commanders 

now began preparing Selected Acquisition 

Reports, Field Assessment Reviews, Management Assessment Reviews, and other 

useful, decentralized studies of specific 

weapons programs. General Phillips also 

appointed a study group, chaired by Major 

General Kenneth R. Chapman, that resulted in a major realignment of Air Force 

laboratories.68

General Phillips and his wife Betty 

lived at Belle Chance until September 

1975, when he retired from active duty. 

Two- and three-year tours now became the 

norm for AFSC commanders. Although 

their stay was brief, the Phillips made 

one of the most unusual contributions to 

the lore of Belle Chance when it became 

known that the general enjoyed keeping a 

flock of peacocks on the grounds.69 

General Phillips’ successor, General William J. Evans, was the first AFSC 

commander born too late to serve in World 

War II. He was graduated from West Point 

a year after that conflict and flew with two 

fighter squadrons during the late 1940s. 

During the Korean War he completed 

about 130 combat missions in four types of 

aircraft.70

In September 1951 then-Major Evans became an aide to ARDC commander 

Lieutenant General Earle E. Partridge. 

This assignment brought him for the first 

time into the research and development 

community, but did not bring him to 

Andrews Air Force Base: The command 
32

General William J. Evans,

commander, AFSC, from

1975 to 1977.

headquarters at that time was in Baltimore, where it had moved from WrightPatterson Air Force Base. Then-Major 

Evans worked for General Partridge until 

March 1952.71

The following month he became 

the operations officer and later, the commander of the 110th Fighter-Bomber 

Squadron at George Air Force Base, California. As a major and lieutenant colonel, 

he held several important staff and fighter 

assignments. From 1964 to 1967 he served 

as the operations officer and then vice 

commander of a training wing stationed at 

Wheelus Air Base, Libya.72

In 1966 then-Colonel Evans volunteered for service in Southeast Asia. 

Stationed at Tuy Hoa Air Base, he served 

first as the vice commander, and later as 

the commander, of the 31st Tactical Fighter 

Wing. By the end of his Vietnam War career in May 1968, then-Colonel Evans had 

flown 278 F–100 combat missions.73

Promoted to brigader general in 

1969, he was assigned to Headquarters 

USAF the following year. General Evans 

served in a series of Pentagon research 

and development assignments during the 

early 1970s. In August 1975, twenty-four 

years after he had reported as General 

Partridge’s aide, he himself became the 

AFSC commander.74

General Evans put a renewed emphasis on the procurement, legal, and logistical aspects of weapons development. 

He restructured the command’s field divisions and its headquarters, where two new 

deputates—Procurement and Production 

and Test and Evaluation—were created. In 

addition to these reorganizations, General 

Evans put in place a number of innovative 

procurement procedures.75

Like many other residents of Belle 

Chance, General Evans and his wife 

Elizabeth Ann were greatly attracted to the 

grounds as well as the house. They made 

extensive changes in the landscaping and, 

since gardening was among their hobbies, 

did most of this work themselves. The 

Evanses put in a large number of flower 

beds and planted hundreds of bulbs.76

During the Evanses’ residence 

workers installed the first security system 

in Belle Chance. This event, although serious in itself, led to one of the most humorous stories in the history of the house. 

Several years later, Mrs. Evans related the 

how the incident began: When she and 

her husband learned about the wedding 

plans of William D. Monday, an Army 

officer, and Kathy Marsh, the daughter of 

then-Lieutenant General Robert T. Marsh 

(AFSC’s vice commander and later its 

commander), they offered the couple the 

Belle Chance guest house for their “first 

night.”77

The story now took a plot twist like 

one in a Shakespearean comedy. “Kathy’s 

younger sister, Debi,” Mrs. Evans explained, “decided to ‘arrange’ a few items” 

in the guest house. The Evanses learned 

about this intended mischief and, to spare 

the newlyweds, offered to let them stay 

in Belle Chance itself. “We stayed in the 

guest house,” Bette Evans related and then 

added a key point in the story: “Only the 

four of us knew this.”78

The new husband made an unlucky decision that night. “While Bill 

Monday was waiting for his bride in bed,” 

Mrs. Evans continued, “he decided to 

use the ‘remote control’ and watch TV.” 

What he thought was a television changer 

turned out to be a security alarm button. “Kathy,” Bill Monday called to his 

wife. “Please tell me I haven’t launched a 

hundred B–52s.” Air Force security policemen quickly surrounded the stately Belle 

Chance house.

“No amount of explanation by 

Kathy,” Mrs. Evans recalled, would convince the security policemen, who stood 

at the front door with their guns drawn, 

“that she was the daughter of the Vice 

Commander. They insisted on seeing the 

Commander!” It took some time to bring 

this episode to a happy ending. Mrs. 

Evans concluded the story: “Finally, at 

the insistence of Kathy, they agreed to call 
33

General Lew Allen, Jr., commander, AFSC,

from 1977 to 1978, later 

served as Air Force Vice

Chief, and then

Chief of Staff.

General Marsh . . . and not bother us. We 

slept through the whole thing!”79 

The Evans family no doubt told 

and retold this tale of misadventure many 

times after they left Belle Chance in July 

1977. General Evans then became the 

commander of Allied Air Forces Central 

Europe and the commander in chief of 

United States Air Forces in Europe.80 He 

was succeeded as AFSC commander by 

General Lew Allen, Jr.

General Allen served as the tenth 

Air Force Chief of Staff, the second Belle 

Chance resident to do so. Born in Gainesville, Texas, he was graduated from West 

Point in 1946 and flew SAC B–29s and 

B–36s during the late 1940s. After earning a doctorate in nuclear physics in 1954, 

then-Captain Allen served as a physicist 

in the test division of the Atomic Energy 

Commission’s Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory. There he conducted experiments 

on the physics of atomic weapons design 

and the effects of high-altitude nuclear 

detonations on missile defense.81

In view of his background, it is not 

surprising that General Allen’s Air Force 

career was directed to space programs, 

special projects, and research and development efforts. From 1957 to 1961 he served 

as a science adviser at the Air Force Special 

Weapons Center; from 1961 to 1965 in the 

Office of the Secretary of Defense’s Directorate of Research and Engineering; from 

1965 to 1969 in the Office of the Secretary 

of the Air Force; and then in a series of Air 

Force space and special programs.82

Then-Major General Allen came to 

Headquarters AFSC for the first time in 

February 1973, during General Brown’s 

tenure as commander. He served a brief 

tour as chief of staff before becoming the 

deputy to the director of Central Intelligence for the Intelligence Community. 

Promoted to lieutenant general, he directed the National Security Agency for four 

years and then returned to Systems Command as its commander in August 1977.83

General Allen soon would move 

on to serve first as Air Force Vice Chief 

and later, Chief of Staff. During his eight 

months as the Systems Command commander, he brought his background in 

space affairs to bear on getting the Air 

Force a more specifically defined mission 

in that important arena. His efforts at that 

time eventually led to the establishment of 

AFSC’s Air Force Space Technology Center 

in June 1982 and to the activation of a new 

major command, the Air Force Space Command, the following September.84

Because General Allen served as 

AFSC commander only until March 1978, 

he and his wife Barbara had the briefest 

Belle Chance tenure among its general-officer families. General Marsh later recalled 

that General Allen, like General Brown, 

had a short residence at—and a great love 

for—Belle Chance. He also believed that 

General Allen, like General Brown, would 

have preferred to remain in the house at 

Andrews Air Force Base rather than move 

to Fort Myer.85 

The Allens, like the Evanses ahead 

of them, devoted much time to the Belle 

Chance grounds. Over the years the area 

around Dr. Stewart’s Old Fishing Hole had 

become infested with poison oak and ivy 

and General Allen personally removed 

this noxious vegetation.86

The Allens had three daughters 

and two sons. With “our big family of 

five children (four married),” Barbara 

Allen later recalled, “we really made use 

of the guest house. Our youngest child, 

Jimmy, was left behind at Fort Meade, 

Maryland, to finish his senior year at high 

school, so weekends he brought many 

friends down to fill the guest house and 

his third floor bedroom.”87

General Allen’s successor, General Alton D. Slay, was a native of Crystal 

Springs, Mississippi. He had enlisted in 

the Army Air Corps in 1942 and was graduated from flying school in 1944. General 
34

General Alton D. Slay,

commander, AFSC, from

1978 to 1981.

Slay earned a B.S. in mathematics from 

George Washington University, and his 

career was marked with important assignments in both the operational and research 

and development arenas.88

During the Vietnam War General 

Slay served as the Seventh Air Force’s 

deputy chief of staff for operations and 

Military Assistance Command Vietnam’s 

director of operations, and he flew 181 

combat missions in jet fighters. After the 

Southeast Asian conflict, General Slay 

filled three high-level research and development assignments. He was Headquarters USAF’s director of operational requirements and development during 1974 

and its deputy chief of staff for research 

and development for the next three years. 

In March 1978 he assumed command of 

Air Force Systems Command.89

The new AFSC commander believed that the time had come to reenergize the Packard reforms, which had been 

initiated almost ten years earlier. General 

Slay put a high priority on increasing the 

competition among aerospace industries 

for Air Force contracts. He also stressed 

the value to the service of firm fixed price 

contracts and of using past performance 

as a guide in selecting contractors. Controlling the costs of major programs also 

remained high on AFSC’s agenda.90 

A memorable event during General 

and Mrs. Slay’s tenure at Belle Chance 

came on May Day 1980, when the General George S. Brown Memorial Garden, 

a beautiful collection of plantings about 

125 feet south of the house, was dedicated. 

General Brown, who had served as AFSC 

commander, Air Force Chief of Staff, and 

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, died 

on 5 December 1978. The Air Force Senior 

Statesmen dedicated the Belle Chance garden to his memory, in a ceremony officiated by Chief of Staff General Lew Allen 

and attended by Alice Colhoun Brown, 

General Brown’s widow.91

By 1981, when the Slays left Belle 

Chance, a half-generation of reform had 

born fruit in the efficient acquisition of 

the systems needed to modernize the Air 

Force. During the decade ahead the USAF 

and the other services would recover from 

the drawdown of the late- and post-Vietnam War years. The 1980s would culminate in the unexpectedly sudden American 

triumph in the Cold War, soon followed 

by the remarkable achievements of Operations Desert Shield and Storm.92

General Slay’s successor, General 

Robert T. Marsh, commanded AFSC during Ronald Reagan’s first administration, 

a period when the Air Force and the other 

services were beginning their post-Vietnam 

revival. General Marsh’s career had begun 

when he entered the Army Air Forces in 

1943. He served as an enlisted man for 

almost two years, completing aircraft mechanic and aerial gunnery training on 

B–17s and B–24s. After being graduated 

from West Point in 1949, then-Second Lieutenant Marsh served as an atomic weapons assembly officer at Sandia Base, New 

Mexico, during the Korean War. During 

the mid-1950s he attended the University 

of Michigan and earned M.S. degrees in 

instrumentation engineering and aeronautical engineering. 

By 1956 it was clear that thenCaptain Marsh would pursue a research 

an development career. That summer he 

reported for the first time to Headquarters 

ARDC, where he became a project officer 

for the Navaho and Matador/Mace missile programs. During the 1960s he served 

tours at ARDC’s Ballistic Missile Division 

and in Headquarters USAF’s Office of the 

Deputy Chief of Staff for Research and Development.

By the time then-Brigadier General Marsh returned to Andrews in June 

1973, AFSC had replaced ARDC a dozen 
35

The George S. Brown Memorial Garden on the grounds of Belle Chance, 1997. (Left to right) General Alton Slay (USAF, retired); his wife Jean; Mrs. George S. Brown; General 

Bernard Schriever (USAF, retired); his wife Joni; General Lawrence Skantze (USAF, retired); his wife Patricia; Lieutenant General David Vesely; his wife Avis.
36

A peaceful setting for contemplation at the General George S. Brown Memorial Garden within the woods of Belle Chance, 2000.
37

General Robert T. Marsh,

commander, AFSC, from

1981 to 1984.

years earlier. General Marsh became the 

headquarters DCS for development plans. 

He then commanded AFSC’s Electronic 

Systems Division for four years beginning 

in 1977 and assumed command of Systems 

Command in February 1981.93

General Marsh and his successors 

met the challenges of the 1980s, a decade 

when AFSC assumed greater acquisition responsibilities. While the Reagan 

administration committed the resources 

needed to revitalize the national defense, 

controlling the costs of programs assumed 

a high priority. General Marsh, a strong 

proponent of firm program baselines,94

particularly emphasized the importance of 

preventing excessive design changes, one 

of the major causes of overruns. He challenged AFSC to keep systems affordable, 

to expand the Air Force’s technological 

base, and to improve the service’s development planning.95

Like many residents of Belle 

Chance, General Marsh and his wife Joan 

were impressed by the amount of wildlife that thrived around the house, and 

they enjoyed hiking the area. “We’d stroll 

down to the ponds in the evening,” General Marsh recalled. “We tramped that 

whole place many times.” Mrs. Marsh 

remembered “the little fawn born down 

by the pond, the rush of many new ducklings every spring and their struggles 

against the turtles, the busy beaver colony 

in the far pond, the muskrats, and the 

ailing great blue heron that we tried to 

nurse back to health one winter. Yes, Belle 

Chance is truly an Air Force gem.”96

The Marshes’ tenure at Belle 

Chance was marked by a number of festive gatherings. Among the attendees at 

a 1982 luncheon for retired generals were 

General James H. “Jimmy” Doolittle, who 

received the Medal of Honor for leading 

the famous Tokyo raid of World War II; 

General William F. “Bozo” McKee, who 

commanded Air Force Logistics Command and served as Air Force Vice Chief 

of Staff; and General Charles A. Gabriel, 

then the Air Force Chief of Staff. (General 

McKee died in 1987 and General Doolittle 

in 1993.)97 

At the time of this function and 

others during the early 1980s, the interior 

of Belle Chance was decorated in white, 

including its new carpeting and window 

treatments, and in light hues. Mrs. Marsh 

chose a yellow color scheme for the kitchen, which was painted at the same time 

that it received a much-needed renovation.98 Although maintenance funds then 

were tight—as they have often been for 

Belle Chance—the Marshes were able to 

get the exterior of the house painted.99

A particularly memorable social 

event took place in the spring of 1983, 

when the Marshes and the Gabriels cosponored a luncheon for the Air Force’s 

retired four-star generals. “I was always 

happy,” General Marsh said, “when 

the Senior Statesmen came out to Belle 

Chance.”100 “It was a marvelous spring 

day,” Mrs. Marsh recalled, “and they all 

gathered in the beautiful, fully-in-bloom, 

General George Brown Memorial Garden 

to reminisce and plan for the future.”101 

Mrs. Marsh explained the arrangements made for that day: “Nearly all of 

the main floor furniture in the house was 

removed to make way for an instant ‘Cafe 

Belle Chance.’ The kitchen was an organized frenzy of aides preparing and serving lunch to the happy warriors.” Among 

the many attendees were retired Generals 

Bernard Shriever and William McKee, and 

it was on this occasion that Ruth Spaatz, 

the widow of General Carl A. “Tooey” 

Spaatz, the first Air Force Chief of Staff, 

was seen “strolling the grounds and reliving many fond memories, especially of 

times at Belle Chance gatherings.”102

Another Belle Chance episode from 

the Marsh years concerned one of the terrorist threats which, beginning during the 

1970s, became lamentably common. “All 

seventeen of the family,” Mrs. Marsh related, 
38

General Lawrence A.

Skantze, commander,

AFSC, from 1984 to

1987.

“were home for Christmas. The Air Police 

called the house and informed us that they 

had sighted some suspicious individuals 

in the woods nearby.” The security police, 

she continued, “insisted that we stay away 

from the windows and lie low until they 

could sweep the grounds. The children 

and grandchildren had a ball eluding the 

imagined terrorists by sneaking around the 

house and ducking and crawling beneath all 

the windows.” Putting a twist on a famous 

Christmas poem, Mrs. Marsh concluded: 

“On this Christmas night all the Marsh creatures were stirring.”103

In 1984 General Marsh retired and 

General Lawrence A. Skantze and his wife 

Patricia moved into Belle Chance. A native 

of the Bronx, General Skantze had begun his 

military career after World War II as a Naval 

radio operator. He was graduated from 

the Naval Academy in 1952 with a B.S. in 

engineering and a commission as a second 

lieutenant in the Air Force.104

General Skantze pursued a successful research and development career. As 

a young major, he contributed to General 

Schriever’s Project Forecast. During 1966 

through 1969 he served as a senior manager 

of the Air Force’s Manned Orbiting Laboratory program.105

Promoted to brigadier general in 

October 1973, General Skantze held many 

AFSC assignments, including a tour as the 

headquarters DCS for systems from 1973 

to 1977 and as the commander of the Aeronautical Systems Division from 1979 to 1982. 

After serving as Headquarters USAF’s DCS 

for research, development and acquisition, 

he was promoted to general in October 1983 

and became Systems Command commander 

in August of the following year.106

General Skantze stated that during 

his tenure at the helm of AFSC, the command would manage the risks of weapons 

acquisition and “serve the best interests of 

the Nation, [Department of Defense], and 

USAF, in that order.” While a close tie to the 

Air Staff was to remain a priority, he believed that decentralizing AFSC’s resources 

would provide the most efficient management. At the same time, General Skantze 

stressed the importance of cooperation 

among Systems Command, Logistics Command, Headquarters USAF and all of the 

military services.107

At General Skantze’s initiative Systems Command conducted Project Forecast 

II during 1985 and 1986. Modeled in part 

on its historic predecessor, this study was 

supported by about fifty Air Force officers, 

enlisted personnel, and civilians, and more 

than one hundred scientists, engineers, and 

military experts. Project Forecast II described seventy technologies and systems 

crucial to the future of the Air Force and an 

implementation strategy to achieve them.108

During the Skantzes’ tenure at Belle 

Chance, the house received the most extensive remodeling since the one undertaken by 

General and Mrs. Joseph Smith during the 

early 1950s. Workers changed the exterior 

decor to its present beige with terra cotta 

trim, laid marble in the foyer floor and in 

front of the fireplaces, and renovated the upstairs master bedroom and two bathrooms. 

The Skantzes decorated the interior of the 

home with brown ballooned drapes and 

peach carpets and used a beige and peach 

color combination in the upholstery of their 

sofas and chairs and in their wallpaper.109 

The couple’s influence on Belle 

Chance remained apparent into the twenty-first century. A rug that they selected 

remains on the third floor of the house. 

Mrs. Skantze purchased some furnishings that are still in the sun room. General 

Skantze found a fine chandelier in the 

attic and had it cleaned up and mounted 

over the entry way. It, too, remains there 

today and is one of the oldest pieces in 

the home.110 

By the mid-1980s the Belle Chance 

guest house needed a renovation. Since no 

funds were available for this work, General Skantze suggested that Military Airlift 
39

General Bernard P.

Randolph, commander,

AFSC, from 1987 to 

1990.

Command, the host unit of Andrews Air 

Force Base, refurbish it as a quarters for 

visiting VIPs. This recommendation was 

accepted in late 1985 and the house was 

renovated to its present appearance.111 

Today two nicely appointed bedrooms and a bathroom take up the top 

floor of the guest house. A small kitchen, 

dining room, and another bathroom are 

features of the main floor. A likeness of 

“Sam Fox,” the mascot of Andrews’ 89th 

Air Wing, guards the dayroom.112

In addition to their renovation 

projects, General and Mrs. Skantze hosted 

a number of memorable social events. Before an April 1985 dining out, several previous AFSC commanders and their wives 

returned to their former home for a social 

gathering. The guest list on this occasion 

included General Schriever, the Fergusons, Alice Colhoun Brown, the Evanses, 

the Slays, and the Marshes. Before the 

Air Force Charity Ball, two springs later, 

ITT president Travis Engen presented the 

Skantzes with a painting of Belle Chance 

by artist Dick Kramer.113

General Skantze’s successor, General Bernard P. Randolph, had strong roots 

in New Orleans, Louisiana. He was born 

there in 1933 and was graduated from 

Xavier University in 1954. Two years later 

he married Lucille Robinson, also a native 

of the Crescent City.

After completing aviation cadet 

training, General Randolph gained six 

years of experience with Strategic Air 

Command, instructing and evaluating 

both bomber and tanker crews. During 

the Vietnam War then-Major Randolph 

served as an airlift operations officer at 

Chu Lai and an airlift coordinator at Tan 

Son Nhut Air Base. He returned to the 

United States in 1970 and began ten years 

of research and development assignments, 

among them managing the U.S. anti-satellite program.

Promoted to brigadier general in 

1980, he held a number of senior acquisition positions, at Headquarters USAF, 

Space Division, and Systems Command. 

General Randolph was AFSC vice commander from June 1984 until May 1985. 

He succeeded General Skantze as the 

Systems Command commander in July 

1987.114

General Randolph led AFSC at a 

crucial juncture in the command’s history. 

He made a strong effort to further the 

acquisition reforms of the 1980s by taking his headquarters out of the program 

management business. “Our job,” he 

asserted in March 1989, “is to assure that 

the resources, the systems, the interfaces, 

and the cross-product division matters are 

properly addressed.”115

By the late 1980s events were underway that eventually would lead to the 

consolidation of Systems Command and 

Air Force Logistics Command. In February 1989 President George Bush directed 

the Defense Department to undertake a 

Defense Management Review, an inquiry 

into the acquisition practices of all the 

services. A report by Secretary of Defense 

Richard Cheney’s special assistant for this 

DMR recommended amalgamating AFSC 

and AFLC. In June 1989 Air Force Chief of 

Staff General Larry D. Welch established a 

panel to study this possibility.116

During these important years in the 

history of AFSC, General Randolph and 

his wife Lucille greatly enjoyed their house 

and its grounds on Andrews Air Force Base. 

Since Belle Chance had been thoroughly remodeled during General Skantze’s tenure, 

the Randolphs made only slight changes 

in the interior of the home. Mrs. Randolph 

chose a blue motif for the wall- paper, 

upholstery, and flower arrangements in the 

living room and sun room. She also had 

the kitchen, which had been yellow since 

the Marshes’ refurbishing, repainted in 

this hue.117

The Randolphs directed considerable efforts on the exterior of the home. 
40

General Ronald W. Yates,

commander, AFSC, from

1990 to 1992.

Workers insulated and restuccoed the 

walls and widened and carpeted the patio. 

The Randolphs added an arched porch to 

the kitchen entrance, which blended well 

with the one over the main entryway and 

furthered the quasi-Spanish style of the 

building.118

Another enduring Belle Chance 

legacy of the Randolphs was the line of 

trees that the general had planted along 

the eastern periphery of the grounds. 

These hardwoods provide an effective 

buffer against the sounds from the nearby 

Andrews flightline and add to the remarkably rural setting of the building, which 

is in fact surrounded by a heavy traffic in 

both aircraft and vehicles. No doubt some 

first-time visitors to Belle Chance enter the 

base’s main gate, travel east along North 

Perimeter Road, take Maryland Drive to 

the lane down to the home, and remain 

completely unaware of how close they 

are to the airplanes on the busy adjoining 

airfield. Many other travelers pass by on 

Perimeter Road and have no inkling of the 

house’s existence.119

In April 1990 the Randolphs were 

succeeded by General Ronald W. Yates, his 

wife Connie and daughter Kristen Anne, 

who was then twenty-one years old and a 

college student. The Yates were the eleventh Systems Command family to live at 

Belle Chance, and they would be the last 

of that group.120

General Yates had entered the Air 

Force after being graduated from the U.S. 

Air Force Academy in 1960. As a test 

pilot, he flew a variety of modified fighters and eventually logged more than 4,400 

flying hours. Then-Lieutenant Yates was 

assigned to the 509th Fighter Interceptor 

Squadron from 1964 to 1966, and he flew 

more than 100 combat missions during the 

Vietnam War.121

In addition to being a test pilot, 

General Yates was the program manager 

for a number of weapons systems and, 

from 1981 to 1983, was the commander of 

the 4950th Test Wing. Promoted to brigadier general in September 1983, he became 

the system program director for the F–16 

fighter. During the spring of 1990 he was 

serving as the principal deputy in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air 

Force for Acquisition, when he was promoted to general and that April became 

the AFSC commander.122

Like the Randolphs, the Yates 

found that the extensive remodeling of 

Belle Chance during the mid-1980s freed 

them from having to undertake any major 

projects. “We were able to select a new 

dining room set for the Air Force,” Mrs. 

Yates recalled, “as the old one had worn 

out.” She also mentioned: “We left the 

carpeting as it was, but we did change the 

draperies. We wanted to let in as much of 

the outdoors as we could so we used mostly sheers and kept them open much of the 

time.”123 Mrs. Yates chose a mixture of 

shades—cream, green, blue, and apricot—

to decorate the interior. A 1991 history of 

Belle Chance characterized her decorating 

scheme as “inviting and soothing.”124

As for the exterior, the Yates found 

that mildew, encouraged by the nearby 

trees, had attacked the patio’s fairly new 

indoor-outdoor carpeting. They had this 

covering removed and a pebble coating 

put over the concrete surface of the openporch area. Lieutenant General Thomas 

G. McInerney, General Yates’s successor at 

Belle Chance, later remarked on how well 

the patio had been refurbished. The Yates 

also had a fair amount of underbrush 

removed from the west side of the house, 

extending back toward the ponds.125

The couple had just begun moving 

in, during May 1990, when Mrs. Yates began preparing for her first social function 

at Belle Chance. Each year the Officers’ 

Wives Club of Andrews held an appreciation tea, hosted by the AFSC commander’s 
41

wife. Since this event would take place in 

late May, Mrs. Yates found that she had 

less than a month to get settled in the new 

home and to finish all the decorating in 

time for the occasion.126

This wives club tea became the 

first of many gatherings that Mrs. Yates 

hosted at Belle Chance. In 1990 and again 

in 1991, Headquarters AFSC family picnics 

were held at the house, with the grounds 

providing a fine setting for softball, volleyball, races, and fishing competitions. Mrs. 

Yates also made Belle Chance available 

for house tours and estimated that during 

her two years there she entertained 2,500 

guests.127

Among the best known of these 

visitors was Brigadier General Charles E. 

“Chuck” Yeager (USAF, retired), a doubledigit ace during World War II and the first 

man to exceed Mach 1, the speed of sound. 

General Yeager stayed with the Yateses in 

April 1991, when he gave a speech at that 

year’s AFSC dining-in. The afternoon before the dinner, the two generals enjoyed 

some casting in Dr. Stewart’s Old Fishing 

Hole.128

This was far from the only occasion when General Yates fished in the 

pond. Accompanied by “Corky,” a female 

black mixed-cocker spaniel, the AFSC 

commander enjoyed many sessions of 

angling at this quiet spot. “I have devised 

a formula,” he said in 1991, “that works 

well for me. Thirty minutes of fishing at 

the pond relieves one work day’s worth 

of frustration. That prescription has made 

my life and the lives of my staff much 

more pleasant.”129

Like many Belle Chance residents, 

the Yates appreciated its natural setting. 

“The pond has soothed many a jangled 

nerve for us both,” Mrs. Yates once wrote. 

“We have spent hours watching the bass 

and perch build their spawn beds in the 

spring and the Canadian geese return every fall. A lone blue heron living at the far 

end of the pond would leave disgustedly 

when we invaded his privacy.”130

During the summer of 1992 the 

Yates prepared to leave Belle Chance. As 

Mrs. Yates anticipated their departure, 

some of her thoughts turned to the natural 

setting of the home. “For Ron and me,” 

she reflected, “the days at Belle Chance 

have been idyllic . . . . A family of wood 

ducks had been coming every spring and 

leaving in the late fall. We wonder if they 

will find the houses we left for them to 

breed in.”131

The couple had at least one other 

strong reason for mixed emotions on 

departing: Air Force Systems Command 

was coming to an end. A series of events 

that began with the Defense Management Review of February 1989 culminated 

on 30 June 1992. On that date, as part of 

the most extensive reorganization of the 

United States Air Force since its emergence 

as an independent service, AFSC was inactivated. Systems Command’s assets were 

combined with those of Air Force Logistics 

Command to form the Air Force Materiel 

Command. This new organization was activated on 1 July 1992, with its headquarters at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, 

Ohio. General Yates was to be AFSC’s last 

commander, and AFMC’s first.132

Several years later, Connie Yates 

recalled her family’s feelings that summer. “It was sad for us,” she explained, 

“because Systems Command no longer 

would be an entity on Andrews, and there 

was doubt about who would be the next 

occupants of Belle Chance.”133 Another era 

in the history of the house drew to a close, 

on a note of uncertainty.
42
43

In July 1992 a new period opened in the history of Belle Chance. 

After that summer’s important changes in the organization of the Air 

Force, no major command commander remained on Andrews Air 

Force Base. The stately house on the north end of the installation and 

its beautiful grounds stood available for another senior officer.

In the summer of 1992 Air Force Chief of Staff General Merrill 

A. McPeak offered the historic residence on Andrews to Vice Chief of 

Staff General Michael P.C. Carns, who was then living in the traditional quarters of the vice chief of staff on Bolling Air Force Base. At the 

time, General Carns had two children who were attending high 

Belle Chance, within its sheltering

woods, a world away from the noise

of aircraft taking off and landing at

Andrews Air Force Base. The end

of a major runway is visible

in the distance.
44

school, and he preferred not to relocate his 

family. “General McPeak acceded to his request,” Assistant Vice Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Thomas G. McInerney related, 

“and then called me, and asked me if I 

would move” to Belle Chance. General McInerney had visited the home twice and was 

well familiar with the house and its setting. 

“When General McPeak asked would I mind 

moving out there,” he recalled with some 

amusement, “I said, “‘Chief, I’m moving 

right away,’ and I was absolutely delighted 

with the opportunity.”1

In addition to the immediate question of General Carns’ circumstances in the 

summer of 1992, another, broader factor 

led General McPeak to offer Belle Chance 

to General McInerney. The assistant vice 

chief of staff serves as the accreditation official for the Air Attaché Corps, a role that 

requires him and his spouse to do a considerable amount of entertaining from their 

home. “The ‘a- vices,’ because they do the 

accreditation,” General McInerney noted, 

“are heavily involved with the attachés. The 

[Belle Chance] quarters really are ideal for 

the responsibilities that you have, for the 

extensive amount of entertaining that you 

have.” General McInerney’s wife Mona 

pointed out that the attachés always enjoyed 

visiting the Andrews residence. Some of 

them, she noticed, seemed to expect to see 

typical base housing, and were pleasantly 

surprised when they made their first visit to 

Belle Chance.2
45

For three weeks during July 1994 

the McInerneys lived in the Belle Chance 

guest house, which the general characterized as “very nice,” while the main house 

was readied for them and laid with new 

beige carpeting throughout. Workers also 

sealed up the basement and did some refurbishing of the third floor and the attic. 

“It was the first time an a-vice moved in,” 

General McInerney recalled, “and we set 

the tempo. We did the renovations, which

 . . . were all completed within budget.”3

As for the exterior, the McInerneys greatly enjoyed the patio, which the 

Yateses had recently renovated. General 

McInerney had installed an automatic 

Gardens at Belle Chance, 2000. 

(Opposite), irises encircle a sundial across the curving driveway

at the main house's entrance.

Azaleas (left), pansies (below,

left), and hostas interspersed with

begonias (below, right) brighten

the main house and its generous

grounds.
46

Patio off the living room at Belle Chance, 2000. This restful area faces west, near where the property slopes downward

toward the ponds.

Belle Chance's patio, 1999.

door opener for the garage doors and new 

awnings for the house. Mrs. McInerney 

took a great interest in gardening and 

added a number of plantings in the area 

around the nearest pond.

Like many couples before them 

over the decades, they enjoyed the wildlife 

around Belle Chance. “We’d sit out on 

that patio,” General McInerney recalled, 

“and each night the fox would come out; 

he had his pattern. It was interesting on 

those long summer nights to sit out there 

and watch his pattern. . . . I remember 

one night my wife and I were standing between the garage and the guest house, and 

he walked within a foot of us. He stopped, 

and then just kept on going.”

The McInerneys moved to Belle 

Chance around the time their son Tom 

reached his twenty-second birthday, and 

the couple arranged a suite for him on the 

third floor of the house. Tom spent two 

summers living there and often visited his 

parents during holidays.4

A few years after General McInerney’s retirement, he reflected on his 

family’s Belle Chance experience: “We 

have wonderful, wonderful memories.” 

The couple entertained guests once or 

twice a month. “It was hard to do more 

than that,” General McInerney explained, 

“because we were going to so many” functions. “In the summer we’d have an open 

house,” he recalled, “for all the attachés. 

We’d hold it out on the patio, and that 

worked very well.” Among the guests 

during the McInerneys’ tenure were General Russell E. Dougherty, commander of 

Strategic Air Command from 1974 to 1977; 

General and Mrs. Merrill A. McPeak; and 

Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska. General 

McInerney recalled in particular that General Charles L. Donnelly (USAF, retired), 

former commander of the United States 

Air Forces in Europe (USAFE), visited 

Belle Chance in April 1994, in one of the 

last social functions he attended before his 

death the following July.5

During that summer of 1994, the 

McInerneys were succeeded by Lieutenant 

General James A. Fain, Jr., and his wife Eileen, who also would live at Belle Chance 

for two years. The second assistant vice 

chief of staff to reside there, General Fain 

appreciated the home as fully as any of its 

previous occupants. By the time he and 

his wife moved into Belle Chance, much 

had been said and written about its attractive qualities. 
47

Alcove decorated by Mrs. Lloyd W. Newton, 1995.

General Fain summed up his first 

impression of the residence in one word: 

“Great!”

6

Given that Belle Chance had been 

refurbished before the McInerneys moved 

in, and that the Fains were only the second 

“a-vice” couple to reside there, they felt 

that the house needed very few changes. 

They kept the interior color scheme that 

they had found on their arrival. The 

Fains thoroughly enjoyed the house and 

grounds, and the sun room became a par-

ticular favorite of Mrs. Fain.

7

General Fain retired on 1 May 

1995, and he and his wife were succeeded 

at Belle Chance by then Lieutenant Gen-

eral Lloyd W. “Fig” Newton and his wife 

Eloise. The Newtons gave considerable at-

tention to both the house and its grounds. 

They purchased the beautiful table, which 

today stands in the alcove, and the hand-

some dining room set, which also remains 

in use. Mrs. Newton had the dining room 

redecorated with new wallpaper, select-

ing a shade of blue that complemented 

the blue in the official Air Force china. 

Mrs. David Vesely, a resident immediately 

after Mrs. Newton, expressed thanks that 

because of the efforts of her predecessor, 

she herself had to do “very, very little to 

the inside of the house.” She did place a 

striking collection of couches throughout 

the large home.

8 

Mrs. Newton’s interest in Belle 

Chance also extended to the outdoors, 

and she enlivened the plantings around 

the house. By the time she and her hus-
48

Main living room, 1990s.

band left the home, the grounds featured 

a colorful mix of tulips, daffodils, and azaleas. One Air Force general who visited 

during the Newtons’ residence later remarked, “General Newton’s wife changed 

the garden dramatically.”9

Lieutenant General Newton became the commander of Air Education 

and Training Command in March 1997, 

and his appointment to general became 

effective on the first day of the following month. With the Newtons’ move to 

Randolph Air Force Base, Texas, Lieutenant General David Vesely became assistant 

vice chief of staff. On 1 April he moved in 

to Belle Chance, making use of base-borrowed furniture, as well as the new dining 

room set, hutch, and other furnishings that 

permanently belonged to the house.10

General Vesely had been serving 

as the commander of the Fourteenth Air 

Force, the historic “Flying Tigers,” and 

was stationed at Vandenberg Air Force 

Base. His wife Avis remained for a time in 

California, with their children who were in 

school there, before joining her husband at 

Belle Chance. Her spouse gave her a first 

report about the home: “You are just not 

going to believe this place. Not only is it a 

beautiful house, but the gardens are beautiful.” Mrs. Vesely found that Belle Chance 

lived up to its advanced billing. “The 

first time I saw the house,” she recalled, “I 

came to visit during the Air Force charity 

ball, the first week in May, and the azaleas 

were all in bloom, and it was absolutely 

spectacular.”11

Mrs. Vesely set herself the task of 

refurbishing the loft apartment over the 

garage. She cleaned out items that had 

been stored there over the years, did some 

painting, and spruced up the shower. 

Once renovated, this apartment, which 

could be reached by internal or external 

stairs, proved “great for the older kids, 

because they could come and go and they 

had their privacy.” The loft had a number 

of residents, including Jessica, the older of 

the Vesely’s two daughters (Casey is two 

years younger), and Amy Hammer, a niece 

of Mrs. Vesely. The garage apartment also 

provided a home for a young man who 

had been graduated from the University 

of North Dakota (Mrs. Vesely is herself a 

native of the Peace Garden state) and was 

serving as a legislative aide to the state’s 

congressman for a summer before starting 

law school.12

The Veselys appreciated the 

Newtons’ extensive redecorating, but 

Belle Chance—like any house—required 
49

maintenance. By the late 1990s some of 

the kitchen appliances needed replacing. 

When large amounts of food were prepared, as at Thanksgiving, the oven did not 

maintain reliable temperatures, and two of 

the stove burners no longer worked. The 

Veselys installed a new oven, a warming 

oven, and a stove. They also replaced the 

kitchen floor covering with a more durable 

material. Belle Chance, as Mrs. Vesely 

pointed out, “is a home, but it’s also an 

official residence and there’s a lot of foot 

traffic. In some areas, like the kitchen, you 

really need something that can take some 

foot traffic.”13

During the Veselys’ tenure the 

historic Darcey cemetery also received 

some much-deserved attention. Over the 

years grass and trees had overgrown the 

area of the graves. Moreover, old limbs 

and trunks stood in the woodline that ran 

near the cemetery, and a windstorm might 

well have brought dead timber down onto 

the gravestones. Mrs. Vesely and her son 

Robert, seventeen at the time the family 

moved into Belle Chance, spent several 

days cutting back the weeds and removing the decaying trees that threatened the 

tombstones. The base civil engineers replaced some of the rotting sections of the 

cemetery’s picket fence, and mother and 

son repainted it white.14

Belle Chance’s dining room: Its table offers an elegant setting

for lunch (below); Mrs. David Vesely confers with a U.S. 

Air Force musician (above, right); a Christmas tree is tucked

into a corner by the mantelpiece (above, left), 1990s.
50

One of a number of nesting boxes built on the grounds of

Belle Chance during theresidence of General and Mrs. David

Vesely. 

 In the woodlots around the Darcey 

cemetery and elsewhere, the Veselys, like 

their predecessors, saw a variety of wildlife. The ponds continued to support fishes, tadpoles, frogs, and snakes. A groundhog made a comfortable home around the 

culvert under the lane running up to Belle 

Chance. A family of rabbits lived in a burrow just off the patio entrance to the house; 

the Veselys often observed young bunnies 

in that area. Beavers, deer, and other mammals also remained in evidence.15 

A nesting box program at Belle Chance 

contributed to the effort to revive the 

population of the Eastern bluebird. This 

species had fared badly during the 1960s 

and 1970s, when suburbanization reduced 

the amount of farm and orchard land east 

of the Mississippi River. The bluebirds did 

not compete well with starlings and house 

sparrows for nesting sites, but specially 

designed boxes like those on Andrews 

Air Force Base had helped them make a 

promising comeback. Volunteers periodically visited the Belle Chance grounds 

and counted the birds and the unhatched 

eggs.16

Wildlife contributed to Belle 

Chance’s pastoral setting, but could also 

be troublesome. Large numbers of Canada geese in the air near an Air Force base 

flightline posed a hazard, and the population of the birds had to be controlled. 

The beavers had their own concepts 

about how the water around Belle Chance 

should be engineered, and their schemes 

were not always compatible with those of 

the human residents. During the Veselys’ 

tenure, for example, these enterprising mammals persisted in cutting down 

healthy trees near the ponds and in damming up the expanse of low ground just 

southwest of the house. The latter project 

caused a particularly serious problem 

because the large quantity of standing 

water in the area made an excellent breeding place for mosquitos. Mrs. Vesely 

remembered with good humor a long 

running “duel” that she waged against 

the beavers: She would shovel through 

their dam and open a waterway, only to 

see them rebuild it, time and again. She 

eventually prevailed on the base engineers 

to have some of the animals trapped and 

relocated. Deer posed another wildlife 

problem: They were fond of eating Belle 

Chance’s plants and shrubs. Among the 

recent residents, however, the Veselys 

fared relatively well on this score, thanks 

to the vigilance of “Ernest,” their mixed 

chow and border collie, who took pride in 

patrolling the grounds.17

Ernest was also a popular attendee at the many social functions that 

the Veselys hosted for the air attachés and 

other guests. “It didn’t matter how big the 

crowd was,” Mrs. Vesely recalled, “a hundred and fifty people or a fourteen-person 

sit-down dinner, he was wonderful. He 

loved the attention—and all the room on 

the grounds to roam.”18

Like all of their predecessors, the 

Veselys did a considerable amount of 

entertaining, hosting at least one dinner a 

month, as well as a number of other gatherings. “We really enjoyed sharing the house 

with a lot of people,” Mrs. Vesely reflected. 

“We had busloads of kids from a school in 

California, which somehow we got connected with.” She also expressed a sentiment held by each one of Belle Chance’s 

military residents: “We felt it should be 

used by more people, not just us.”19

General Vesely was succeeded as 
51

Belle Chance in winter, 1990s. Lovely all year round, Belle

Chance and its grounds have a dramatic beauty under gray

skies and a dusting of snow.
52

Belle Chance's guest house (left), garage with upstairs apartment (center), and side view of the garden house, 2000.
53

Ponds at Belle Chance, 2000. 

the assistant vice chief of staff by Lieuten-

ant General William J. Begert in August 

1999. General Begert reported to Wash-

ington from his assignment as USAFE’s 

vice commander at Ramstein Air Base, 

Germany, and he and his wife Jody moved 

into Belle Chance that fall. The Begerts fur-

nished the home beautifully, using largely, 

as all recent residents had, their own furni-

ture and appointments.20 

General Begert held a deep interest 

in the history of Belle Chance and a great 

appreciation for its setting. In addition to 

the gardens, ponds, and Darcey cemetery, 

he identified some of the less obvious at-

tractions of the property. He enjoyed the 

view northeast from the kitchen across 

the driveway toward the guesthouse and 

other outbuildings. General Begert also 

recognized the small meadow that stood 

north 

of the house, encircled by some fine hard-

wood trees, as another underestimated 

feature of the grounds, and referred to it 

as “the par-three field.”21 

Like many of his recent predeces-

sors, General Begert was impressed that a 

surprising amount of wildlife continued to 

thrive around Belle Chance, just a short dis-

tance from the twenty-first century suburbs 

of Washington, D.C., and the flightline of a 

busy Air Force base. He and his wife some-

times saw two foxes, one slightly larger 

than the other, who frequented the area. He 

once watched from the deck of the house 

while one of these predators dispatched 

a rabbit and carried it off into the woods. 
54

Christmas at Belle Chance, 2000. The house's architectural richness is enhanced by seasonal decorations. (Below) main

living room with central fire place; (opposite, clockwise) alcove table with reindeer, gift box, pointsettia plant, and tree; 

dining room with central fire place and tree; entrance with stairway to second floor. 

For a time during the late 1990s the foxes 

were rarely seen, perhaps made wary by 

the Veselys’ Ernest.) The deer population 

of the area also remained healthy, in some 

regards too healthy. Mrs. Begert found 

that the bucks and does persisted in eating 

the property’s flowers and shrubs. The 

beavers had been trapped and relocated 

during the Vesely’s tenure, but General 

Begert could still point out evidence of 

their handiwork, especially in the area 

southwest of the house where these energetic mammals had significantly reduced 

the once-thick woods.22

By the late 1990s Belle Chance had 

reached a time in its life when it again 

needed some fundamental work. General 

Begert noted in particular the home’s old 

electric heating system, with its outdated 

hardware that was mounted externally 

on the walls. In the basement, a maze 

of plumbing pipes and electric wires ran 

overhead, and the problem of the leaks 

at this level of the house had never been 

completely defeated.23 

The Begerts, concerned about the 

future of the home, intended to have some 

necessary renovations made toward the 

end of their stay at Belle Chance.24 

The historic house on Andrews 

has earned the affection that its residents 

have expressed for it over the years. One 

general officer who lived there during the 

1980s characterized it as “a wonderful 

place. . . . It’s the finest set of quarters that 

the Air Force has.” A resident during the 

1990s declared: “It’s a magnificent home, and 

deserves special treatment.” And a third general officer summed up the enduring qualities 

of Belle Chance: “It’s a place of history, a place 

of beauty, and a place of refuge.”25
55
56

An Evening at Belle Chance

20 December 2000

The Assistant Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force, Lieutenant General William J. Begert, and his wife Jody host a festive holiday dinner for a group of international air attachés

and their wives.

A musical interlude with the USAF's Singing Sergeants.

A toast to good friends in Belle Chance's sun room.
57

A special “thank you” from General Begert to Chief Master Sergeant Claude Skelton, Technical Sergeant Lynette

Gotay-Cui, and Ms. Nella Wall for excellent support of the

evening's activities.

(Left to right) Air Commodore Jim Barclay of the Royal

New Zealand Air Force; Mrs. Axel Schwarz; Colonel Axel

Schwarz of the German Air Force; Mrs. James Barclay;

Colonel Avi Maor of the Israeli Air Force; Mrs. Avi Maor;

Brigadier General Ziya Guler of the Turkish Air Force;

Mrs. Ziya Guler; Mrs. William J. Begert; Lieutenant

General William J. Begert, Assistant Vice Chief of Staff,

USAF; Air Commodore Sudhir Asthana of the Indian Air 

Force; Mrs. Sudhir Asthana; Colonel Jake Polumbo, Chief,

Foreign Liaison Division, HQ USAF; Mrs. Jake Polumbo; 

Mrs. Barney Booij; Colonel Barney Booij of the Royal

Netherlands Air Force; Mrs. Geoff Simpson; Air Commodore Geoff Simpson of the Royal Air Force.
58

Camp	Springs/Andrews	Air	Field	Commanders

Captain Andrew Salter,	1943

Colonel Michael McHugo, 1943–1944

Colonel William L. Boyd,	1944–1945	

Lieutenant Colonel Robert N. Maupin,	1945

Colonel Curtis D. Sluman, 1945–1947 

Commanding	General,	Strategic	Air	Command

General George C. Kenney, 1946–1948

Commanding	Generals,	Military	Air	Transport	Service

Lieutenant General Lawrence S. Kuter,	1948–1951

Lieutenant General Joseph Smith, 1952–1957

Commanders,	Air	Research	and	Development	Command

Lieutenant General Samuel E. Anderson,	1958–1959

General Bernard A. Schriever,	1959–1966

Commanders,	Air	Force	Systems	Command

General James Ferguson, 1966–1970

General George S. Brown, 1970–1973

General Samuel C. Phillips, 1973–1975

General Williams J. Evans, 1975–1977

General Lew Allen, Jr., 1977–1978

General Alton D. Slay, 1978–1981

General Robert T. Marsh,	1981–1984

General Lawrence A. Skantze,	1984–1987

General Bernard P. Randolph, 1987–1990

General Ronald W. Yates,	1990–1992

Assistant	Vice Chiefs of Staff, Headquarters USAF

Lieutenant General Thomas G. McInerney,	1992–1994	

Lieutenant General James A. Fain, Jr.,	1994–1995

Lieutenant General Lloyd W. Newton, 1995–1997 

Lieutenant General David L. Vesely, 1997–1999

Lieutenant General William J. Begert,	1999–
59

Assistant Vice Chiefs of Staff, Headquarters USAF

Lt. General Thomas G. McInerney, 

1992–1994

Lt. General James A. Fain, Jr.,

1994–1995

Lt. General Lloyd W. Newton, 

1995–1997

Lt. General David L. Vesely, 

1997–1999

Lt. General William J. Begert,

 1999–
60
61

This book originated with Lieutenant 

General William Begert’s deep appreciation 

for the interesting history and beautiful setting of Belle Chance. He and his wife Jody 

welcomed us into their home, gave us an 

informative tour of the house and grounds, 

and shared their impressions of this unique 

Air Force residence. General Begert supported every phase of this work—its research, writing, illustrating, and production.

Many former residents of Belle 

Chance also generously contributed to our 

efforts. General (retired) and Mrs. Robert T. 

Marsh, Lieutenant General (retired) Thomas 

G. McInerney, and Mrs. David Vesely gave 

valuable oral history interviews. A number of others corresponded with us or lent 

us photographs, including Barbara Allan, 

General (retired) Lew Allen, Jr., Dora D. Brett 

(Schriever), Lieutenant General (retired) 

James A. Fain. Jr., and Mrs. Ronald W. Yates.

Several people helped us research 

the pre-Air Force history of Belle Chance. 

Major General (retired) Gary L. Curtin, a descendant of the Darceys, sent several pages 

of notes he had taken while investigating his 

family’s genealogy. Mr. Douglas P. McElrath, 

curator of Marylandia and rare books at the 

University of Maryland’s McKeldin Library, 

steered us to useful sources and illustrations. 

Reference librarians Mr. Bob Barnes and Ms. 

Miss Hale assisted our work at the Maryland 

State Archives.

Ms. Susan G. Pearl, historian at the 

Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission and volunteer at the 

Prince George’s County Historical Society, 

deserves special mention. We benefited 

greatly from her knowledge of the history of 

the area around Belle Chance. She offered 

important materials from her files and made 

helpful comments on a draft of our work. 

We also thank Dr. Richard P. Hallion, the Air 

Force Historian, and Mr. Herman S. Wolk, 

Chief, Analysis and Reference Division, Air 

Force History Support Office, who also read 

our manuscript.

We built on the publications and 

advice of four historians who worked on 

the history of Belle Chance and Andrews 

Air Force Base ahead of us: Colonel Juliette 

Finkenauer, Chief Master Sergeant (Select) 

Walt Grudzinskas, Mr. Walter L. Kraus,and 

Mr. Robert F. Phillips. Technical Sergeant 

Terri J. Burmeister, historian of the 89th

Airlift Wing, also aided our research. Ms. 

Susan Linders, Art Director, Media Services, 

11CS/SCUS, along with Veronica Williams, 

Visual Information Specialist, provided the 

design of the book, scanning photographs, 

typesetting, and producing an electronic file 

for printing. 

Finally, we greatly appreciate the 

cooperation we received from Belle Chance 

aides Chief Master Sergeant Claude Skelton 

and Technical Sergeant Lynette Gotay-Cui. 

They always found time to answer our 

questions, which is only one example of the 

impressive professionalism they bring to 

their work. They—and many others—made 

it a pleasure to study the history of Belle 

Chance.

PDJ

MLJ

8 December 2000 Belle Chance entrance framed with

topiary, azaleas, and pansies.
62
63

Chapter One

1. Dawson Lawrence, “Historical Sketch of 

Prince George County, Md.,” in G.M. Hopkins, Atlas of Fifteen Miles Around Washington,

Including the County of Prince George, Maryland (Philadelphia, 1878; reprint, 1975), 7.

2. Aubrey C. Land, “Provincial Maryland,” 

in Richard Walsh and William Lloyd Fox, 

Maryland: A History (Annapolis, 1983), 1–5; 

Alan Virta, Prince George’s County: A Pictorical

History (Virginia Beach, Va., 1998), 19–20.

3. Effie Gwynn Bowie, Across The Years In Prince

George’s County (Richmond, 1947), vii; Virta, 

Prince Georges County, 28, 31; MarylandNational Capital Park and Planning Commission (MNCPPC), “Melwood Westphalia 

Approved Master Plan and Sectional Map 

Amendment (Planning Areas 77 and 78),” 

March 1994, 19.

4. George D. Denny, Jr., Proud Past, Promising

Future: Cities and Towns in Prince George’s

County, Maryland (Brentwood, Md., 1997), 

348–349; Bowie, Across The Years, viii.

5. Bowie, Across The Years, vii; Denny, Proud Past, 

342–343; J.F.C. Fuller, A Military History of the

Western World, 3 vols. (New York, 1954–1956), 

2:127–155.

6. Bowie, viii. Lower Marlboro is said to be the 

second oldest town in Maryland. Charles 

Francis Stein, A History of Calvert County

Maryland (Baltimore, 1977), 420, 441.

7. MNCPPC, “Melwood Westphalia Approved 

Master Plan,” 19.

8. Walter L. Kraus and Juliette C. Fougere, ed., 

Belle Chance and Environs: A Historical Summary (Andrews Air Force Base, D.C., [1986]), 5; 

Land, “Provincial Maryland,” 13, 15; Gloria 

Main, Tobacco Colony: Life in Early Maryland,

1650–1720 (Princeton, 1982), 42.

9. Land Office (Patent Record), 1716–1728, ILA, 

indexed, page 59, microfilm number SR 7470, 

Maryland State Archives (MSA) number 

SM2–56, Maryland State Archives, Annapolis, Maryland. A 29 November 1734 petition 

stated that Hill was then “ca 63 years.” Elise 

Greenup Jourdan, ed., The Land Records of

Prince George’s County, Maryland, 1733–1739

(Westminister, Md., 1996), 38. In 1738 Hill 

signed leases as an attorney. Ibid., 133, 134. 
64

10. Robert F. Phillips, Belle Chance: Commander’s Residence, Air Force Systems Command,

Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland (Andrews 

Air Force Base, D.C., 1984), 4. Between 1689 

and 1763 at least nineteen patents were 

awarded in Prince George’s County (or what 

was to become that entity) for tracts named 

“Chance” or “The Chance.” Other properties had similiar names: William Brown’s 

“Chance Encreased” (1764), James Marshall’s 

“Part of Chance Enlarged” (1760), and 

Shadrick Beall’s “Chance Enlarged” (1768). 

Patents and Tracts Index, 1634–1984, Index 

55, Drawer 38, MSA number S1427, Maryland State Archives. 

11. Land Office (Patent Record), 1716–1728, 

ILA, indexed, page 59, microfilm number 

SR 7470, MSA number SM2–56, Maryland 

State Archives; Elise Greenup Jourdan, ed., 

The Land Records of Prince George’s County,

Maryland, 1717 to 1726 (Westminister, Md., 

1991), 46. Some time between 1719 and 1753 

Clement Hill disposed of another 100 acres 

of his “Chance” award. County land office 

debt books show that he paid taxes on 128 

acres from 1753 until 1772. Prince George’s 

County Land Office (Proprietary Debt 

Books), 1753–1758 and 1759–1765, microfilm 

numbers SR 7993 and SR 8232, MSA number 

SMO 124, and 1766–1772, Box 37, MSA number S1430, Maryland State Archives. Hill 

gave his son Clement, Jr., 100 acres in 1737, 

but this was property that adjoined his home 

plantation, and not “The Chance.” Jourdan, 

ed., Land Records of Prince George’s County,

1733–1739, 111. 

12. Virta, Prince George’s County, 38; Carl Bode, 

Maryland: A Bicentennial History (New York, 

1978), 12–13; Vera Foster Rollo, Your Maryland: A History (Lanham, Md., 1993), 313.

13. Main, Tobacco Colony, 66–68.

14. Virta, Prince George’s County, 38; Land, 

“Provincial Maryland,” 34.

15. Prince George’s County Land Office 

(Proprietary Debt Books), 1772, Box 37, pages 

11 and 12, MSA number S1430, Maryland 

State Archives; Phillips, Belle Chance, 4; Virta, 

Prince Georges County, 70.

16. Kraus and Fougere, Belle Chance and

Environs, 6; comment by historian Susan G. 

Pearl of the Maryland-National Capital Park 

and Planning Commission and the Prince 

George’s County Historical Society on a draft 

of this work, 20 November 2000.

17. John K. Mahon, The War of 1812 (Gainesville, 

Fla., 1972), 293–294; Donald R. Hickey, The

War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict (Urbana and 

Chicago, 1989), 197; Walter Lord, The Dawn’s

Early Light (New York, 1972), front endpaper 

map. Lord’s popular book contains some 

helpful maps.

18. Mahon, War of 1812, 294–295; Hickey, War

of 1812, 197. Anthony S. Pitch, The Burning

of Washington: The British Invasion of 1814

(Annapolis, 1998), 54, characterizes Upper Marlboro as “almost deserted.” On the 

Prince George’s County informants of General Ross, Mahon, War of 1812, 294, notes that 

before the campaign began Rear Admiral Sir 

George Cockburn advised Admiral Cochrane 

there were “guides” who would conduct the 

British anywhere in the area; and Hickey, 

War of 1812, 197, states that General Ross 

halted “at Upper Marlboro to consult with 

his spies.”

19. Mahon, War of 1812, 297; Lord, Dawn’s Early

Light, 28. For the early nineteenth century 

form for “Wood Yard,” see Secretary of State 

James Monroe’s 22 August 1814 dispatch to 

President James Madison, quoted in ibid., 

72–73. On the correct date for this message, 

see ibid., 355.

20. Lord, Dawn’s Early Light, 69–73, 77.

21. Ibid., 77–78; Pitch, The Burning of Washington, 

53. See also the map from Lossing’s Field

Book reproduced in Mahon, War of 1812, 296.

22. Mahon, War of 1812, 297, and Hickey, War

of 1812, 197, refer to the area’s “heavy” and 

“dense” forest.

23. Jean A. Sargent, ed., Stones and Bones:

Cemetery Records of Prince George’s County,

Maryland (Bowie, Md., 1984), 390. 

24. Lord, Dawn’s Early Light, 81, 85; Hickey, War

of 1812, 198. Most secondary accounts have 

the British camping for the night of 23–24 

August at the Melwood plantation. Historian Susan G. Pearl suggests they bivouacked 

farther west than that. This would reduce 

their marching distance from Bladensburg, 

which they reached the following afternoon. 

25. Lord, Dawn’s Early Light, 85, gives the distance from Melwood to Long Old Fields as 

three miles; it measures slightly further.

26. Alexandria Drafting Company (ADC) map 

of Prince George’s County, 30th (1999) edition, maps 25 and 26. The author visited the 

area on 24 July 2000. 

27. Pitch, The Burning of Washington, 57–58; 

Lord, Dawn’s Early Light, 87.

28. Mahon, War of 1812, 297–298. GeneralWinder himself estimated his total numbers 

at 5,000. Pitch, The Burning of Washington, 72. 

Historians give larger figures: Mahon, War

of 1812, 298, and Lord, Dawn’s Early Light, 

87, make it 6,000; Hickey, War of 1812, 197, 

“perhaps 7,000.”

29. Hickey, War of 1812, 197.
65

30. Lord, Dawn’s Early Light, 119. Julia M. Harrell and Ernie S. Montagliani, “Historical 

Archeological Survey: Andrews Air Force 

Base,” August 1984, 8, mention some details 

of this march, but document them only with 

vague references to two British diaries. Also, 

their discussion of an intended American 

ambush is difficult to reconcile with the accounts by Lord and other historians. On the 

other hand, the march route that Harrell and 

Montagliani show for the British, on map 4 

of their study, matches well with Lord’s map.

31. Lord, Dawn’s Early Light, 119.

32. Ibid., 111, 116. Secretary Monroe deployed, 

or perhaps mis-deployed, some of the troops 

on the battlefield. Ibid., 112–113.

33. Pitch, The Burning of Washington, 85; Lord, 

Dawn’s Early Light, 139. Lord evidently relied on a British source, probably a dispatch 

written by General Ross after the battle, for 

the figure of 120 Americans captured.

34. Lord, Dawn’s Early Light, 137–138; Hickey, 

War of 1812, 198. Hickey’s estimate of the 

American losses does not include prisoners.

35. Pitch, The Burning of Washington, 99; Lord, 

Dawn’s Early Light, 156; Mahon, War of 1812, 

302.

36. Hickey War of 1812, 199, 201; Mahon War of

1812, 302; Lord, Dawn’s Early Light, 185. 

37. At least one member of the family was a veteran of the War of 1812. A Sergeant Francis 

Darcey served in the Maryland Militia in 

1814 and died on 13 August 1840. His grave 

is the oldest in the Forest Memorial United 

Methodist Church cemetery. Sargent, Stones

and Bones, 390. Francis Darcey’s relationship 

to John Darcy and the Belle Chance estate is 

not known.

38. Susan G. Pearl to Jim Darcey, 19 September 

1994 (citing County wills, administration 

files, and marriage licenses), File 77–014 

Belle Chance, Maryland-National Capital 

Park and Planning Commission records 

(hereafter cited as MNCPPC records); April 

1995 Maryland Historical Trust State Historic 

Sites (MHTSHS) Inventory Form, attached to 

Susan G. Pearl to Historic Preservation Commission, 23 March 1995, ibid.

39. Susan G. Pearl to Jim Darcey, 19 September 

1994; Shirley Langdon Wilcox, ed., 1828 Tax

List Prince George’s County, Maryland (n.p., 

1985), 25, 70.

40. Phillips, Belle Chance, 5; April 1995 MHTSHS 

Inventory Form.

41. Sargent, Stones and Bones, 569. The authors 

examined the Darcy markers and measured 

the dimensions given in this paragraph on 

30 June 2000. Hannah Darcy’s gravestone 

was inscribed less professionally than her 

husband’s. The artisan wrapped her last 

name around the first and second lines of 

the marker, and rendered it “Darsey.” By 

the summer of 2000 neither the day of her 

death nor the “1” in “1807” were legible: 

they appear in Sargent, Stones and Bones, 569, 

which is based on research done by the Toaping Castle Chapter of the Daughters of the 

American Revolution during the mid-1950s.

42. ADC Map of Prince George’s County, map 

19; Susan G. Pearl to Jim Darcey, 19 September 1994. The author drove this road on 21 

July 2000 and found the spellings on its signs 

divided between “D’Arcy” and “Darcy.” 

Research notes given to the author by Major 

General Gary L. Curtin (USAF, retired), a 

great-great grandson of William Darcey, 

mention the connection between the name of 

this road and that of his family.

43. April 1995 MHTSHS Inventory Form; 

comment by historian Susan G. Pearl on a 

draft of this work, 20 November 2000. The 

Stewarts, who were the last private owners 

of Belle Chance, believed that the French romantic movement had influenced Calvert to 

choose this name. Kraus and Fougere, Belle

Chance and Environs, 7.

44. J.G. Randall and David Donald, The Civil

War and Reconstruction (Lexington, Mass., 

1969), 22–23, 82. For an overview of the 

issue of slavery in the territories, see James 

McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil

War Era (New York, 1988), 8, 51–72.

45. Randall and Donald, Civil War and Reconstruction, 25–26; Maryland Historical Trust 

State Historic Sites (MHTSHS) Inventory 

Form for Forest Grove Methodist Episcopal 

Church (Chapel 2, Andrews Air Force Base), 

attached to Susan G. Pearl to the Historic 

Preservation Commission, 23 March 1995, 

File 77–001 Forest Grove Methodist Church, 

MNCPPC records.

46. MHTSHS Inventory Form for Forest Grove 

Methodist Episcopal Church; an undated 

summary paper on the history of Chapel 2, 

Andrews Air Force Base, written by Sergeant 

Thomas M. Gorski, historian of the 1100th 

Air Base Wing, File 77–001 Forest Grove 

Methodist Church, MNCPPC records. 

47. Sargent, Stones and Bones, 390, 396; MHTSHS 

Inventory Form for Forest Grove Methodist Episcopal Church, citing the 1842–1880 

minutes book of the Methodist Episcopal 

Church South.

48. MHTSHS Inventory Form for Forest Grove 

Methodist Episcopal Church, citing the 

Planters Advocate, 15 March 1854; MNCPPC, 

“Melwood Westphalia Approved Master 
66

Plan,” 20. A February 1985 MHTSHS Inventory Form, found in File 77–001 Forest Grove 

Methodist Church, MNCPPC records, mentions that the church lot was deeded in 1855. 

49. Sargent, Stones and Bones, 396. A map in 

Robert Underwood Johnson and Clarence 

Clough Buel, eds., Battles and Leaders of the

Civil War, 4 vols. (New York, reprint, 1956), 

4:496, suggests that these three forts were 

the nearest to the Forest Grove Methodist 

Church. Benjamin Franklin Cooling, Symbol,

Sword, and Shield: Defending Washington during the Civil War (Shippensburg, Pa., 1991), 

244, lists ten forts which stood east of the 

Anacostia River, and whose remains were 

still standing in the 1990s. Sergeant Thomas 

M. Gorski, historian of the 1100th Air Base 

Wing, researched a number of primary 

sources but wasn’t able to identify these 

Union troops or to learn how they used the 

church. Undated summary paper on the history of Chapel 2, Andrews Air Force Base. 

50. “History of the Church,” File 77–001 Forest Grove Methodist Church, MNCPPC 

records; Sargent, Stones and Bones, 396–398. 

An undated monograph prepared in the 

1776th Air Base Wing history office, “Historical Highlights of Andrews AFB, 1942–1989,” 

518, adds the detail that the church’s regular 

minister was “sent back to Virginia,” and 

quotes a War Department directive aimed 

at the pro-Southern churches, but gives no 

sources for its information.

51. The 1854 church was replaced in 1880. After 

a severe windstorm destroyed this second 

building in 1914, the present chapel was 

constructed, using the plan and design of the 

1880 structure. MHTSHS Inventory Form for 

Forest Grove Methodist Episcopal Church.

52. Dr. Perry Jamieson visited Chapel 2 on 21 

July 2000; Sargent, Stones and Bones, 396–398, 

lists all of the church cemetery’s burials. 

53. Phillips, Belle Chance, 5; April 1995 MHTSHS 

Inventory Form.

54. April 1995 MHTSHS Inventory Form; Phillips, Belle Chance, 7.

55. Phillips, Belle Chance, 7; April 1995 MHTSHS 

Inventory Form.

56. Phillips, Belle Chance, 7; April 1995 MHTSHS 

Inventory Form; Mrs. Ronald W. Yates (Connie) to Dr. Perry Jamieson, 22 August 2000. 

The mushroom planting left a large depression in the ground which was visible into the 

1990s.

57. Kraus and Fougere, Belle Chance and Environs, endpaper; Phillips, Belle Chance, 

7. Susan G. Pearl to Historic Preservation 

Committee, 23 March 1995, refers to two 

springfed lakes with ornamental retaining 

walls, to the southwest of the house. These 

are Dr. Stewart’s “Old Fishing Hole” and a 

second pond, just west of it. The ADC Map 

of Prince George’s County, map 25, shows 

a third pond, south of the first, and General 

Robert T. Marsh (USAF, retired) and his 

wife Joan, and other Belle Chance residents, 

also remember this small body of water. It 

evidently had dried up by 1995; it remained 

in that condition in the summer of 2000. 

“There are several associated structures, all 

constructed of concrete, including a springhouse and overflow devices for the lakes.” 

Susan G. Pearl to Historic Preservation Committee, 23 March 1995.

58. Kraus and Fougere, Belle Chance and Environs, 8. Mrs. Stewart’s first name appears on 

a plaque which at one time was in the main 

entrance of Belle Chance. Ibid., 19.

59. April 1995 MHTSHS Inventory Form; Kraus 

and Fougere, Belle Chance and Environs, 8. 

Historian Robert F. Phillips reported that Dr. 

Stewart’s holdings eventually came to 800 

acres, and Walter Kraus and Juliette Fougere 

repeated this figure. Phillips, Belle Chance, 7; 

Kraus and Fougere, Belle Chance and Environs, 7, 8.

60. MNCPPC, “Melwood Westphalia Approved Master Plan,” 20; ADC Map of Prince 

George’s County, map 25. The author visited 

the area on 24 July 2000.

61. Virta, Prince Georges County, 223; map of 

Spaldings District in Hopkins, Atlas of Fifteen

Miles Around Washington, 22.

62. Virta, Prince Georges County, 193.

63. April 1995 MHTSHS Inventory Form; Kraus 

and Fougere, Belle Chance and Environs, 8; 

Phillips, Belle Chance, 6.

64. April 1995 MHTSHS Inventory Form; Kraus 

and Fougere, Belle Chance and Environs, 8; 

interview with General Robert T. Marsh 

(USAF, retired) and Mrs. Joan Marsh, 20 

September 2000. During a 20 June 2000 tour 

of Belle Chance, Lieutenant General William 

J. Begert showed the author that poured 

concrete remained plainly visible between 

the slats of an attic storage room.

65. Photocopy of E.S. Child, “A Fire-Proof Cottage,” Shoppell’s Owners and Builders Magazine

11 (November 1909), n.p., attached to April 

1995 MHTSHS Inventory Form.

66. This suggestion was made by historian 

Susan G. Pearl and is based on her research: 

photocopies of “A Modern Indestructible 

Home,” Shoppell’s Owners and Builders Magazine 12 (December 1909), n.p.; “Reinforced 

Concrete for Residence Construction,” 4 
67

(April 1910), 15; E.S. Child, “A Substantial 

Fireproof House,” 3 (March 1910), 14, attached to April 1995 MHTSHS Inventory 

Form.

67. April 1995 MHTSHS Inventory Form.

68. Ibid. The original guest house consisted of 

two bays. A third, northerly one was added 

during the 1940s, on a concrete-block foundation. Ibid.

69. Ibid.

70. Master Sergeant Walt Grudzinskas, Petty Officer Second Class Donnie Ryan, Susan Pearl, 

and Paula Howard, “Winning Together: 

Andrews Air Force Base and Prince George’s 

County, 1943–1995,” [Washington, D.C., 

1995], n.p.

71. Kraus and Fougere, Belle Chance and Environs, 9–10.

72. Grudzinskas et al., “Winning Together,” n.p.

73. Kraus and Fougere, Belle Chance and 

Environs, 10; Grudzinskas et al., “Winning 

Together,” n.p.

74. Kraus and Fougere, Belle Chance and Environs, 10; Elizabeth Oldfield and William 

Flythe, Jr., “100 Maryland Families Ordered 

Off Airport Site,” unidentified newspaper 

clipping in File 77–014 Belle Chance, MNCPPC records; Grudzinskas et al., “Winning Together,” n.p. Andrews Air Force Base grew 

modestly beyond its original boundaries: 

in 1998 the installation occupied over 4,000 

acres. Virta, Prince George’s County, 233.

75. “100 Maryland Families Ordered Off”; Kraus 

and Fougere, Belle Chance and Environs, 10.

76. “100 Maryland Families Ordered Off.”

77. Juliette C. Finkenauer, Belle Chance and

Environs: A Historical Summary (Andrews 

Air Force Base, D.C., 1991), 3. Juliette C. 

Finkenauer is the married name of Juliette 

C. Fougere: she wrote the work cited in this 

note and was the editor of Walter L. Kraus 

and Juliette C. Fougere, ed., Belle Chance and

Environs: A Historical Summary (Andrews Air 

Force Base, D.C., 1986).

78. Phillips, Belle Chance, 10; interview with 

Ruby Ile of Gannett Fleming, Incorporated, 

Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, 31 August 2000; 

Technical Sergeant Terri Burmeister, 89th Airlift Wing historian, to Dr. Perry Jamieson, 16 

August 2000; The First Sixty Years: 1915–1975, 

a privately printed history of Gannett Fleming Corddry and Carpenter Incorporated, 

53–54 and 55; Robert Mueller, Air Force Bases

(Washington, D.C., 1989), 7. Earlier Belle 

Chance histories identify Janet R. Gannett as 

“Gaunett.” Employees of Gannett Fleming, 

a company directly descended from the firm 

that Janet R. Gannett’s husband founded 

in 1915, provided information—including 

an obituary of Farley Gannett from a Harrisburg newspaper—that helped correct this 

typographical error. 

79. The First Sixty Years: 1915–1975, 55.

80. Kraus and Fougere, Belle Chance and Environs, 14.

81. Phillips, Belle Chance, 10. According to 

archivist William Siebert of the National 

Personnel Records Center, Saint Louis, Missouri, Military Personnel Records finding 

aids indicate that the captain’s last name was 

“Salter” rather than “Salters,” which appears in secondary sources, and that Captain 

Salter’s records probably were destroyed by 

fire in July 1973. See also Lieutenant Colonel 

Richard S. Johnson and Debra Johnson Knox, 

How to Locate Anyone Who Is or Has Been in the

Military (Spartanburg, S.C., 1999), 29.

82. Adjutant General’s Office Form 66–2, Army 

Air Forces Officers’ Qualification Record, 

Michael E. McHugo, Military Personnel 

Records, National Personnel Records Center, 

Saint Louis, Missouri.

83. Ibid.; “Lieutenant General Frank M. Andrews” in Charles D. Bright, Historical 

Dictionary of the U.S. Air Force (New York, 

et al., 1992), 64; Dewitt S. Copp, “Frank M. 

Andrews: Marshall’s Airman,” in John L. 

Frisbee, ed., Makers of the United States Air 

Force (Washington, D.C., 1987), 69–70.

84. Phillips, Belle Chance, 9.

85. Adjutant General’s Office Forms 66–2, Army 

Air Forces Officers’ Qualification Record, 

Robert Norton Maupin and Curtis Delano 

Sluman, Military Personnel Records, National Personnel Records Center, Saint Louis, 

Missouri. Lieutenant Colonel Maupin’s last 

name erroneously appears as “Mauphin” 

in earlier Belle Chance histories, and as 

“Maaupin” on a plaque which is mounted 

on a wall to the right of the main entryway 

into the residence. One previous history also 

has Maupin succeed Colonel Boyd in January 1945. During that month Maupin was 

attending the Royal Canadian Air Force’s 

Staff College in Toronto. In February 1945 he 

returned to Camp Springs to serve as Boyd’s 

deputy and succeeded him as commander 

that May. AGO Form 66–2, AAF Officers’ 

Qualification Record, Robert Norton Maupin.

86. AGO Form 66–2, AAF Officers’ Qualification 

Record, Curtis Delano Sluman.
68

Chapter Two

1. Juliette C. Finkenauer, Belle Chance and Environs: A Historical Summary (Andrews Air 

Force Base, D.C., 1991), 2. 

2. Robert F. Phillips, Belle Chance: Commander’s

Residence, Air Force Systems Command, Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland (Andrews Air 

Force Base, D.C., 1984), 11; Herman S. Wolk, 

“George C. Kenney: The Great Innovator,” 

in John L. Frisbee, ed., Makers of the United 

States Air Force (Washington, D.C., 1987), 127; 

Peter R. Faber, “General George C. Kenney (1889–1977),” in Charles D. Bright, ed., 

Historical Dictionary of the U.S. Air Force (New 

York et al., 1992), 321–322. In addition to 

these sources, there is a fine recent biography 

of General Kenney: Thomas E. Griffith, Jr., 

MacArthur’s Airman: General George C. Kenney

and the War in the Southwest Pacific (Lawrence, Kans., 1998). Readers should also 

consult George C. Kenney, General Kenney

Reports: A Personal History of the Pacific War

(reprint, Washington, D.C., 1987); Stanley 

L. Falk, “General Kenney, the Indirect Approach, and the B–29s,” Aerospace Historian

27:3 (Fall/September 1981), 146–155; and 

Herman S. Wolk, “The Other Founding 

Father,” Air Force Magazine 70:9 (September 

1987), 164–173.

3. Faber, “General George C. Kenney,” 322; 

Wolk, “George C. Kenney,” 127.

4. Ibid.

5. Phillips, Belle Chance, 11; J.C. Hopkins and 

Sheldon A. Goldberg, The Development of

Strategic Air Command, 1946–1986 (Offutt Air 

Force Base, Neb., 1986), 12, 13.

6. Roger D. Launius, “Military Airlift Command,” in Bright, ed., Historical Dictionary, 

383–384; Roger G. Miller, To Save a City: The

Berlin Airlift, 1948–1949 (Washington, D.C., 

1998), 21, 107–108.

7. Phillips, Belle Chance, 12; “Laurence Sherman 

Kuter” in A.N. Marquis and Company, Who’s

Who in America, 1966–1967 (Chicago, 1967), 

1199; Peter R. Faber, “General Laurence S. 

Kuter (1905–1979),” in Bright, ed., Historical Dictionary, 332; Haywood S. Hansell, Jr., 

“Gen. Laurence S. Kuter,” Air Force Magazine 63:6 (June 1980), 97. There is no full 

biography of General Kuter, but he appears 

prominently in DeWitt S. Copp, A Few Great

Captains: The Men and Events That Shaped the

Development of U.S. Air Power (New York, 

1980) and Forged in Fire: Strategy and Decisions in the Airwar over Europe, 1940–1945

(New York, 1982). See also Kuter’s own The

Great Gamble: The Boeing 747 (Tuscaloosa, 

Ala., 1973) and “JFK and LBJ Consider 

Aerospace Defense,” Aerospace Historian 24:1 

(Spring/March 1978), 1–4.

8. Faber, “General Laurence S. Kuter,” 332–333.

9. Interview with Mrs. Robert T. Marsh 

( Joan), 20 September 2000; Finkenauer, Belle

Chance and Environs, 20. Sometime after 

the Kuters’ residence, a stand of bamboo 

was planted to screen the corn crib from the 

house.

10. April 1995 Maryland Historical Trust State 

Historic Sites (MHTSHS) Inventory Form, 

attached to Susan G. Pearl to Historic 

Preservation Commission, File 77–014 Belle 

Chance, Maryland-National Capital Park 

and Planning Commission records; notes on 

a conversation with Lieutenant General William J. Begert, 20 June 2000; interview with 

Lieutenant General Thomas G. McInerney 

(USAF, retired), 29 August 2000. Finkenauer, 

Belle Chance and Environs, 20, shows that the 

corn crib stood at its current location in 1951.

11. Finkenauer, Belle Chance and Environs, 3; Mrs. 

Ronald W. Yates (Connie) to Dr. Perry Jamieson, 22 August 2000.

12. Finkenauer, Belle Chance and Environs, 3.

13. Ibid., 3 and 27. Dr. Perry Jamieson walked 

this old roadway on 26 July 2000. 

14. “Gen. Joseph Smith Dies; Organized Berlin 

Airlift,” Washington Post, 22 May 1993, D–5. 

On General Smith’s career, see also “Joseph 

Smith,” Historical Study 91, Biographical Data Study of USAF General Officers, 

1917–1952, volume N–Z, Air Force History 

Support Office Library.

15. “Gen. Joseph Smith Dies,” D–5; “Joseph 

Smith,” Historical Study 91, Biographical Data Study of USAF General Officers, 

1917–1952.

16. “Joseph Smith,” Historical Study 91, Biographical Data Study of USAF General Officers, 1917–1952; Miller, To Save a City, 26, 

32–34.

17. “Joseph Smith,” Historical Study 91, Biographical Data Study of USAF General Officers, 1917–1952; “Gen. Joseph Smith Dies,” 

D–5.

18. Finkenauer, Belle Chance and Environs, 21; 

notes taken by author during tour of Belle 

Chance with colleague, Mary Lee Jefferson, 

20 June 2000. 

19. Finkenauer, Belle Chance and Environs, 21.

20. Jacob Neufeld, “Bernard A. Schriever: Challenging the Unknown,” in Frisbee, Makers
69

of the United States Air Force, 286; Michael 

H. Gorn, Vulcan’s Forge: The Making of an

Air Force Command for Weapons Acquisition

(1950–1986), 2 vols. (Andrews Air Force Base, 

Md., 1986), I:19 and 2:appendices 6–5, 6–9, 

and 6–10.

21. Gorn, Vulcan’s Forge, 2: appendix 2–1; Col. 

Kenneth V. Carey, commander, 1947 Administrative Support Group, to all personnel 

Headquarters USAF, “Funeral Services—

General Samuel E. Anderson, United States 

Air Force (Retired),” 14 September 1982, in 

Retired General Officers, Volume I (A–B), Air 

Force History Support Office Library. See 

also “Samuel Egbert Anderson,” Historical 

Study 91, Biographical Data Study of USAF 

General Officers, 1917–1952, Volume A–F, 

ibid.

22. Colonel Kenneth V. Carey to all personnel 

Headquarters USAF, 14 September 1982.

23. Ibid.

24. Ibid.; Gorn, Vulcan’s Forge, I:52–53.

25. Gorn, Vulcan’s Forge, I:53–54.

26. Ibid., 57–58.

27. Finkenauer, Belle Chance and Environs, 21.

28. Peter R. Faber, “General Bernard A. Schriever (1910–),” in Bright, ed., Historical Dictionary, 512; Neufeld, “Bernard A. Schriever,” 

283. As yet General Schriever has not 

received the full biography he deserves. 

See the Neufeld article cited here and its 

“Sources”; Jacob Neufeld, The Development

of Ballistic Missiles in the United States Air 

Force, 1945–1960 (Washington, D.C., 1990); 

and Ernest G. Schwiebert, “USAF’s Ballistic 

Missiles—1954–1964: A Concise History,” 

Air Force and Space Digest 47:5 (May 1964), 

51–166. In June 1998 Falcon Air Force Base, 

Colorado, was renamed in General Schriever’s honor.

29. Neufeld, “Bernard A. Schriever,” 283–284; 

Faber, “General Bernard A. Schriever,” 

512–513.

30. Faber, “General Bernard A. Schriever,” 

513; Neufeld, “Bernard A. Schriever,” 286; 

288–300.

31. Neufeld, “Bernard A. Schriever,” 292–293.

32. Faber, “General Bernard A. Schriever,” 513.

33. Gorn, Vulcan’s Forge, I:66; Neufeld, “Bernard 

A. Schriever,” 301.

34. Neufeld, “Bernard A. Schriever,” 301.

35. Official Air Force biography of General 

Bernard A. Schriever, March 1966; Neufeld, 

“Bernard A. Schriever,” 303–304.

36. Neufeld, “Bernard A. Schriever,” 303, 303–

304. On Project Forecast, see also Michael H. 

Gorn, Harnessing the Genie: Science and Technology Forecasting for the Air Force, 1944–1986

(Washington, D.C., 1988), 5–9.

37. Neufeld, “Bernard A. Schriever,” 303.

38. Gorn, Harnessing the Genie, 5; Neufeld, “Bernard A. Schriever,” 304.

39. Official Air Force biography of General 

Bernard A. Schriever, September 1965; marginalia on Air Staff History Office’s copy of 

ibid.; official Air Force biography of General 

Henry Harley Arnold, n.d.; Dora D. BrettSchriever to Dr. Perry Jamieson, 6 November 

2000. Dora D. Brett was married to General 

Schriever until 1997. Ibid. 

40. Finkenauer, Belle Chance and Environs, 22; 

Dora D. Brett-Schriever to Dr. Perry Jamieson, 6 November 2000.

41. Thomas C. Blow II, “Brigadier General 

Charles A. Lindberg (1902–1974),” in Bright, 

ed., Historical Dictionary, 348; Dora D. BrettSchriever to Dr. Perry Jamieson, 6 November 

2000. Lieutenant General Carl H. Cathey 

(USAF, retired), who visited Belle Chance as 

a captain during the early 1960s, recalled the 

dining room arrangement of the Shrievers. 

Comments by Lieutenant General William J. 

Begert during a tour of Belle Chance, 20 June 

2000.

42. Dora D. Brett-Schriever to Dr. Perry Jamieson, 6 November 2000; Finkenauer, Belle

Chance and Environs, 22; April 1995 Maryland 

Historical Trust State Historic Sites (MHTSHS) Inventory Form, attached to Susan G. 

Pearl to Historian Preservation Commission, 

23 March 1995, File 77–014 Belle Chance, 

MNCPPC records.

43. Interview with Joan Marsh, 20 September 

2000; Dora D. Brett-Schriever to Dr. Perry 

Jamieson, 6 November 2000; Connie Yates to 

Dr. Perry Jamieson, 22 August 2000. 

44. Dora D. Brett-Schriever to Dr. Perry Jamieson, 6 November 2000; Finkenauer, Belle

Chance and Environs, 3. During the late 1980s 

General Bernard P. Randolph added some 

trees in the same area where Mrs. Schriever 

had planted, as a buffer between the Belle 

Chance grounds and the Andrews Air Force 

Base flightlines. Notes on a conversation 

with Air Force Assistant Vice Chief of Staff 

Lieutenant General William J. Begert, 20 June 

2000.

45. Interview with General Robert T. Marsh 

(USAF, retired), 20 September 2000.

46. Official Air Force biography of General 

James Ferguson, September 1969.
70

47. Ibid.; “James Ferguson: Air Force General,” 

Washington Post, 22 July 2000, B–7.

48. Official Air Force biography of General 

James Ferguson.

49. Ibid.

50. Gorn, Vulcan’s Forge, I:103–104.

51. Ibid., 87–88.

52. Ibid., 88.

53. Finkenauer, Belle Chance and Environs, 23; 

official Air Force biography of General James 

Ferguson. 

54. Finkenauer, Belle Chance and Environs, 23. In 

1985 this cabinet was closed in and covered 

with wallpaper. Ibid.

55. Maurice Maryanow, “General George S. 

Brown (1918–1978),” in Bright, ed., Historical

Dictionary, 126; official Air Force biography 

of General George S. Brown, February 1978; 

Claude Witze, “USAF’s New Leaders,” Air

Force Magazine 56:9 (September 1973), 58 and 

59. Readers can consult a full biography of 

General Brown, Edgar F. Puryear, Jr., George

S. Brown: General, U.S. Air Force: Destined For 

Stars (Novato, Calif., 1983); Edgar Ulsamer, 

“At Stake: USAF’s Economic Survival: Interview With Gen. George S. Brown,” Air Force

Magazine 56:9 (September 1973), 50–57; and 

Lawrence J. Korb, The Joint Chiefs of Staff: The

First Twenty-five Years (London and Bloomington, Ind., 1976), 78–79, 83, 84, 92, 172, 187.

56. Maryanow, “General George S. Brown,” 

126; official Air Force biography of General 

George S. Brown.

57. Ibid.

58. Ibid.

59. Puryear, George S. Brown, 203.

60. Gorn, Vulcan’s Forge, I:89–90.

61. Interview with General Robert T. Marsh 

(USAF retired), 20 September 2000. 

62. Maryanow, “General George S. Brown,” 126; 

Department of Defense Legacy Project, Air

House: A History (Washington, D.C., 1994), 

57.

63. Finkenauer, Belle Chance and Environs, 28; 

Puryear, George S. Brown, 280.

64. Official Air Force biography of General 

Samuel C. Phillips, 1 May 1974.

65. Ibid.; “Gen. Samuel C. Phillips Dies; Directed 

Apollo Moon Mission,” Washington Post, 2 

February 1990, B–6.

66. “Gen. Samuel C. Phillips Dies,” B–6; official 

Air Force biography of General Samuel C. 

Phillips; Roger E. Bilstein, Stages to Saturn:

A Technological History of the Apollo/Saturn

Launch Vehicles (Washington, D.C., 1980), 289. 

On General Phillips’s service with the Apollo 

program, see also in Bilstein, Stages to Saturn, 

188, 223, 230–232, 254, 278, 339, 351–353, 

364–365.

67. Official Air Force biography of General 

Samuel C. Phillips.

68. Gorn, Vulcan’s Forge, I:96–97; 104, 104n, 

106–109.

69. Lieutenant Colonel Robert A. Moyer, deputy 

assistant for General Officer Matters, to all 

personnel Headquarters USAF, “Death of 

General Samuel C. Phillips, United States Air 

Force (Retired),” 1 February 1990, in Retired 

General Officers, Volume VI (P–R), Air Force 

History Support Office Library; interview 

with Joan Marsh, 20 September 2000. 

70. Official Air Force biography of General William John Evans, April 1978.

71. Ibid.

72. Ibid.

73. Ibid.

74. Ibid.

75. Gorn, Vulcan’s Forge, I:97, 98, 98n.

76. Finkenauer, Belle Chance and Environs, 4.

77. Ibid. The spellings of the names of the 

principals in this story follow the official Air 

Force biography of General Robert T. Marsh, 

August 1982.

78. Finkenauer, Belle Chance and Environs, 4.

79. Ibid.; interview with General (USAF retired) 

and Mrs. Robert T. Marsh, 20 September 

2000.

80. Official Air Force biography of General William J. Evans, April 1978.

81. James C. Hasdorff, “General Lew Allen, Jr., 

(1923– )” in Bright, ed., Historical Dictionary, 

61; official Air Force biography of General 

Lew Allen, Jr., September 1981. On General 

Allen, see also Walter J. Boyne, Beyond the

Wild Blue: A History of the United States Air 

Force 1947–1997 (New York, 1997), 249, 250, 

271, and Robert Frank Futrell, Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine: Basic Thinking in the United 

States Air Force, 2 vols. (Washington, D.C., 

1989), II:360–361, 366–368, 372–373, 387–388, 

400–403, 509–510, 563–564, and elsewhere. 

82. Official Air Force biography of General Lew 

Allen, Jr.

83. Ibid.

84. Gorn, Vulcan’s Forge, I:99; “USAF Leaders 
71

Throught the Years,” Air Force Magazine 83: 5 

(May 2000), 47.

85. Finkenauer, Belle Chance and Environs, 23; 

interview with General Robert T. Marsh 

(USAF, retired), 20 September 2000.

86. Finkenauer, Belle Chance and Environs, 23.

87. Ibid.

88. Official Air Force biography of General Alton D. Slay, January 1980; “Alton Davis Slay” 

in A.N. Marquis and Company, Who’s Who in

America 1980–1981, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1981), 

2:3064.

89. Official Air Force biography of General Alton D. Slay; “Alton Davis Slay,” 2:3064.

90. Official Air Force biography of General Alton D. Slay; “Alton Davis Slay,” 2:3064.

91. Finkenauer, Belle Chance and Environs, 38. 

The Slays also added a handsome magnolia 

tree to the Belle Chance grounds. Interview 

with General Robert T. Marsh (USAF, retired) 

and Mrs. Marsh, 20 September 2000.

92. On the revitalization of American military 

forces between the Vietnam and Gulf Wars, 

see Richard P. Hallion, Storm over Iraq: Air

Power and the Gulf War (Washington and London, 1992), 27–120.

93. Official Air Force biography of General Robert T. Marsh, August 1982.

94. Gorn, Vulcan’s Forge, I:96, 126.

95. Ibid., 96n, 101.

96. Interview with General Robert T. Marsh 

(USAF, retired) and Mrs. Marsh, 20 September 2000; Finkenauer, Belle Chance and

Environs, 48.

97. Ibid., 24; Colonel Joann C. Neish to all personnel, Headquarters USAF, 3 March 1987; 

“In Arlington, Full Honors for a Sky-Blazing 

Hero,” Washington Post, 2 October 1993, B–3.

98. Interview with General Robert T. Marsh 

(USAF, retired) and Mrs. Marsh, 20 September 2000; Finkenauer, Belle Chance and

Environs, 24, 26.

99. Interview with General Robert T. Marsh 

(USAF, retired) and Mrs. Marsh, 20 September 2000.

100. Finkenauer, Belle Chance and Environs, 24; 

interview with General Robert T. Marsh 

(USAF, retired) and Mrs. Marsh, 20 September 2000.

101. Finkenauer, Belle Chance and Environs, 24.

102. Ibid.

103. Ibid.; interview with General Robert T. 

Marsh (USAF, retired) and Mrs. Marsh, 20 

September 2000.

104. Official Air Force biography of General 

Lawrence A. Skantze, August 1984.

105. Ibid.; Gorn, Harnessing the Genie, 142.

106. Official Air Force biography of General 

Lawrence A. Skantze.

107. Gorn, Vulcan’s Forge, 1:102.

108. For a good summary of this important Air 

Force initiative, see Gorn, Harnessing the 

Genie, 142–172.

109. Finkenauer, Belle Chance and Environs, 25; 

interview with Mrs. David L. Vesely (Avis), 8 

September 2000.

110. Comments by Lieutenant General William J. 

Begert during a tour of Belle Chance, 20

June 2000.

111. Finkenauer, Belle Chance and Environs, 

25; interview with Avis Vesely, 8 September 

2000.

112. Notes taken during a tour of Belle Chance, 

20 June 2000.

113. Finkenauer, Belle Chance and Environs, 25.

114. Official Air Force biography of General 

Bernard P. Randolph, June 1988.

115. History of Air Force Systems Command: 1 

October 1988–30 September 1989, 6.

116. Ibid., xxi, 7, 11.

117. Finkenauer, Belle Chance and Environs, 26.

118. Ibid.; April 1995 MHTSHS Inventory Form.

119. Finkenauer, Belle Chance and Environs, 26; 

comments by Lieutenant General William J, 

Begert during a tour of Belle Chance, 20 June 

2000.

120. Connie Yates to Dr. Perry Jamieson, 22 

August 2000; Finkenauer, Belle Chance and

Environs, 26.

121. Official Air Force biography of General 

Ronald W. Yates, June 1994.

122. Ibid.

123. Finkenauer, Belle Chance and Environs, 26; 

Connie Yates to Dr. Perry Jamieson, 22 August 2000.

124. Finkenauer, Belle Chance and Environs, 26.

125. Connie Yates to Dr. Perry Jamieson, 22 August 2000; interview with Lieutenant General 

Thomas G. McInerney (USAF, retired), 29 

August 2000.

126. Ibid.

127. Finkenauer, Belle Chance and Environs, 29; 
72

Connie Yates to Dr. Perry Jamieson, 22 August 2000.

128. James O. Young, “Brigadier General 

Charles E. Yeager (1923 – )” in Bright, ed., 

Historical Dictionary, 684; Finkenauer, Belle

Chance and Environs, 27; Connie Yates to Dr. 

Perry Jamieson, 22 August 2000.

129. Connie Yates to Dr. Perry Jamieson, 22 

August 2000; Finkenauer, Belle Chance and

Environs, 2.

130. Finkenauer, Belle Chance and Environs, 3.

131. Ibid.

132. “Commands in Transition,” Air Force Magazine, 75:5 (May 1992), 53; Closeout History: Air

Force Systems Command, 1 October 1990–30

June 1992, and Air Force Logistics Command, 1

October 1991–30 June 1992, xxv, xxvii.

133. Connie Yates to Dr. Perry Jamieson, 22 

August 2000.

Chapter Three

1. Official Air Force biography of General 

Michael P.C. Carns; interview with Lieutenant General Thomas G. McInerney (USAF, 

retired), 29 August 2000.

2. Official Air Force biography of Lieutenant 

General Thomas G. McInerney; interview 

with Lieutenant General Thomas G. McInerney (USAF, retired), 29 August 2000; notes on 

a conversation with Mrs. Thomas G. McInerney (Mona), 29 August 2000.

3. Interview with Lieutenant General Thomas G. 

McInerney (USAF, retired), 29 August 2000.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.; J.C. Hopkins and Sheldon A. Goldberg, 

The Development of Strategic Air Command 

1946–1986 (Offutt Air Force Base, Neb., 

1986), 189, 211; official Air Force biography 

of General Charles L. Donnelly, August 1986.

6. Official Air Force biography of Lieutenant 

General James A. Fain, Jr., February 1995; 

Lieutenant General James A. Fain, Jr. (USAF, 

retired), to Dr. Perry Jamieson, 28 August 

2000.

7. Lieutenant General James A. Fain, Jr. (USAF, 

retired) to Dr. Perry Jamieson, 28 August 

2000. 

8. Official Air Force biography of Lieutenant 

General James A. Fain, Jr., February 1995; 

official Air Force biography of General Lloyd 

W. “Fig” Newton, August 2000; comments 

by Lieutenant General William J. Begert and 

Chief Master Sergeant Claude Skelton during a tour of Belle Chance, 20 June 2000; interview with Avis Vesely, 8 September 2000.

9. Interview with Avis Vesely, 8 September 2000; 

interview with Lieutenant General Thomas 

G. McInerney (USAF, retired), 29 August 

2000.

10. Official Air Force biography of General 

Lloyd “Fig” Newton, August 2000; official 

Air Force biography of Lieutenant General 

David L. Vesely, December 1999; interview 

with Avis Vesely, 8 September 2000.

11. Interview with Avis Vesely, 8 September 

2000.

12. Ibid.; comments by Lieutenant General William J. Begert during a tour of Belle Chance, 

20 June 2000.

13. Interview with Avis Vesely, 8 September 

2000.

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid.; interview with Lieutenant General 

Thomas G. McInerney (USAF, retired); notes 

taken during an interview with Lieutenant 

General William J. Begert,

2 May 2000.

16. Interview with Avis Vesely, 8 September 

2000; notes taken during a meeting with 

Lieutenant General William J. Begert, 2 May 

2000; National Geographic Society, Field 

Guide to the Birds of North America (Washington, D.C., 1987), 324.

17. Interview with Avis Vesely, 8 September 

2000; notes taken during a meeting with 

Lieutenant General William J. Begert, 2 May 

2000.

18. Interview with Avis Vesely, 8 September 

2000.

19. Ibid.

20. Official Air Force biography of William J. Begert, December 1999; comments by Lieutenant General William J. Begert during a tour 

of Belle Chance, 20 June 2000. The Air Force 

for a time maintained a warehouse on Bolling Air Force Base, D.C., where furnishings 

for general officers’ quarters were stored, but 

this was discounted as an economy measure. 

Comments by Lieutenant General William J. 

Begert during a tour of Belle Chance, 20 June 

2000.

21. Notes taken during a meeting with Lieutenant General Begert, 2 May 2000; comments 

by Lieutenant General William J. Begert during a tour of Belle Chance, 20 June 2000.

22. Notes taken during a meeting with Lieuten-
73

ant General Begert, 2 May 2000; comments 

by Lieutenant General William J. Begert dur-

ing a tour of Belle Chance, 20 June 2000; in-

terview with Avis Vesely, 8 September 2000.

23. Notes taken during a meeting with Lieuten-

ant General Begert, 2 May 2000; comments 

by Lieutenant General William J. Begert 

during a tour of Belle Chance, 20 June 2000; 

interview with Lieutenant General Thomas 

G. McInerney (USAF, retired), 29 August 

2000.

24. Notes taken during a meeting with Lieuten-

ant General Begert, 2 May 2000.

25. Interview with General Robert T. Marsh 

(USAF, retired), 20 September 2000; inter-

view with Lieutenant General Thomas G. 

McInerney (USAF, retired), 29 August 2000; 

General Ronald W. Yates, quoted in Finke-

nauer, Belle Chance and Environs, 2.