Just because John Wayne supposedly played a character based on your father in the movies,

a World War II Admiral Hero who whipped into shape the fighting seabees, it doesn't mean

you have to follow in his daunting footsteps.

But John Perry, Admiral John Perry did just that.

A Navy man whose badges of honor earned him an enviable kind of all-access backstage past

a life.

One that made doors open, sitting President Salute, and certain women, one in particular,

glowed to simply being his company.

Barbara Bentley would be swept away by John's ease and command.

But she'd also be swept into the swirling tide of his mysterious and secret of life, a

world of subterfuge and intrigue it would take her decades to surface from.

Who could have guessed that Barbara's fate would change so utterly with a friend's invitation

to drinks and dinner?

A friend calls me at work and says, oh, could you do me a favor, could you do me a favor,

could you come for the dinner party tonight, I need a fourth for dinner.

Barbara was 35 and recently separated from her husband.

She'd been on her own for more than a year in California's Bay Area and was growing

more comfortably into the routines of a single woman.

I had a good job, I was going to school.

So you were really taking care of yourself here?

Right, right.

Your life wasn't shape.

...