The Little Green Men of Roswell

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ROSWELL, NEW MEXICO — The little green men are everywhere. They stand in front of storefronts, in the lobby of the Holiday Inn where I stayed, and peek out of shop windows. A much larger green man holds up the sign for Dunkin’ and Baskin Robbins — a truly giant alien. This pleasant city of 43,000 folks in southeastern New Mexico bills itself as the UFO Capital of the World.

In July 1947, the now-closed Roswell Army Air Field (later renamed Walker Air Force Base) initially issued a press release stating that a “flying disc” had been recovered after a rancher found debris north of the town. The Roswell Daily Record (which is still publishing) ran a front-page story with an attention-getting headline: RAAF Captures Flying Saucer on Ranch in Roswell Region. Unsurprisingly, it made headlines worldwide.

A day later, the military retracted its statement, saying the wreckage was from a downed weather balloon. The incident faded from view for three decades until a nuclear physicist named Stanton Friedman, who had left academia a few years earlier to investigate unidentified flying objects, became the first civilian to document the site of the Roswell UFO incident and argue that it was a genuine crash of an extraterrestrial spacecraft. Others soon followed, and in 1980 a book titled The Roswell Incident was published. The UFO craze began at Roswell and has never abated.

The International UFO Museum and Research Center opened as a nonprofit in 1992, founded by three men: Walter Haut, who had been the public relations officer at the base; Glenn Dennis, who worked at a funeral home in 1947 and claimed the military had sought information on youth-sized caskets; and J. Max Littell, a local real-estate developer. It moved in 1997 into the remodeled Plains Theater. An average of 200,000 visitors arrive annually, making the museum a leading economic driver for Roswell.

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I am agnostic on the subject of UFOs. A flying saucer shaped my newspaper career, which is one reason I remain interested and made the 625-mile drive from Three Geese Farm in East Texas to Roswell.

As a science project in ninth grade, I created a fake flying saucer using an old Star Trek model. I snapped off its wings and hung it with fishing line in our backyard on South Twelfth Street in Longview. I borrowed my mom’s Brownie camera, bought a roll of black-and-white film, and lay down under the model so it appeared to hover over the ridgeline of our house. I took the film downtown to the Camera Shop, had it processed, and had a few 8×10 prints made. I took the best one and stuck it on a poster board. The title was something like UFOs: Fact or Fake?

I entered it in the science fair held annually at Kilgore College and won a blue ribbon. At the time, I was working in the mailroom of the Longview News-Journal, having climbed one rung up the ladder from paperboy. The chief photographer saw the project when he came out to cover the science fair. He recognized me because I hung around the paper all the time.

“So, you’re interested in photography? We might have a part-time job for you,” he said.

I immediately became “interested in photography” since it beat the hell out of stuffing circulars into newspapers. I have been taking photos since.

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The UFO Museum is professionally curated with modern displays. It’s a bargain at $5 for senior admission. The museum was renovated a few years ago, with several interactive touch screens added. In addition to the Incident at Roswell, exhibits include sightings elsewhere, movies and television shows about UFOs, and plenty of other displays that make the modest admission price well worth it. A small library and archives are also available for folks interested in researching the subject. If they had an opening for an archivist, I would be tempted to apply.

I kept my admission sticker on my shirt and returned later that afternoon to revisit the exhibits, buy a cap in the gift shop, and pick up a pair of UFO socks for my Beautiful Mystery Companion. The rain kept me from hiking as planned, so I ate a modest dinner of caldo de pollo, washed it down with an excellent margarita at a local Mexican restaurant, and spent the rest of the evening watching college football while reading in my hotel room.

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The next morning, I left Roswell an hour before sunrise, gearing up for the 11-hour drive back to East Texas. As the sun began to cast an orange glow along the 180-degree horizon in this flat terrain, a bright light appeared high in the sky and moved rapidly. It was an odd sight, probably a plane.

Probably. Hmm.

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