NEW CUMBERLAND, Pa. (WHTM) — Robert Primrose, Jr., shares more than just a name with his father and hero, who died in 1964, when Primrose was just six years old.

Major Robert Primrose, Sr., bought a grand piano a year before he died suddenly in a plane crash, hoping one of his children would learn to play, and to say the younger Robert merely “learned” is an understatement: He plays professionally in bands and teaches music.

Also like his father, who died at the age of 34, the younger Primrose, who is now 67, also went to the U.S. Air Force Academy and is a pilot.

But it’s safe to say Primrose, Jr., who moved from Arizona to Pennsylvania with his mother when he was a child, will — like all but 10 other people in the world — never fly a mission like his father did: in a U-2 spy plane 70,000 feet over Cuba.

Another “Operation Brass Knob” pilot, Rudolph Anderson of Greenville, South Carolina, was shot down over Cuba in October 1962. Primrose survived the mission but died in an accident while landing in Arizona. Newspaper accounts at the time cited a burst of wind.

“In the desert, there’s a lot of what we call ‘dust devils,’ which are like small tornadoes,” Primrose, Jr., said. “And I think the winds just flipped the U-2.”

He said the same characteristics that made the U-2 such a good spy plane (such as its ability to fly twice as high as most commercial aircraft) — one that continues to fly today — also made it particularly susceptible to risks near the ground.

Primrose, Jr., still has a model U-2 he built with his father before the fatal accident.

All Operation Brass Ring pilots were awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. But considering what they accomplished — among other things, learning Cuban strongman Fidel Castro still had nuclear missiles pointed at America, even after he claimed otherwise, thus potentially saving who-knows-how-many-million lives — Primrose, Jr., said their accomplishments went relatively underappreciated, for an understandable reason.

“This being so top secret at the time, the pilots never really got much recognition for their sacrifice and their service,” Primrose, Jr., said.

Primrose, Sr., also enjoyed photography and managed to take photographs from U-2 altitudes that required him to wear protective suits similar to those worn by astronauts.

“I was recently watching the celebrities go up into space for a few minutes and thinking that these pilots did that on a daily basis and went up to the edge of space and could see the same type of sights,” Primrose, Jr., said.

Primrose, Sr.’s, work over Cuba would have been more than enough to make him a war hero, even if he didn’t also fly 101 missions over Korea — which he did.

“He flew in dogfights against the Soviet MIGs, and due to his actions — and they’re documented by the Air Force — you know, he saved a lot of other pilots from being shot down,” Primrose, Jr., said.

Primrose, Sr.’s, wife — Primrose, Jr.’s mother — was an Air Force nurse and first lieutenant in her own right. Primrose, Jr., remembers arriving home from school and seeing his mother being consoled the day of the accident.

“As a six-year-old kid, I didn’t quite comprehend what was going on,” Primrose, Jr., said. “But that night on the news, they showed that picture of them, and the gravity of it really sank in.”

He thinks about that — but also about this:

“You know, in this day of divisive politics and the tendency of democracy being tested, I think of guys like this,” Primrose, Jr., said, pointing to a photo of his father, “and it gives me hope.”