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ROSWELL, N.M. - Sixty years after bigheaded, toothpick-limbed green aliens allegedly crashed in the New Mexico desert - leaving little but paranoia in their wake - Roswell embraces the extraterrestrial.
Each month, the museum greets visitors from all 50 states and 35 countries - 2.5 million since its founding. According to one analysis, it generates $35 million in indirect spending each year for the city of 50,000 residents.
Shuster said her father never imagined it would be so wildly popular, but now she sees herself as the caretaker of his legacy.
The museum has outgrown its home at a former movie theater and soon will occupy a new $25 million building. Shuster acknowledges there's been friction with some souvenir shop owners who complain retailers will be hurt when the museum moves five blocks up Main Street. She jokes that she no longer feels all the knives thrown into her back.
Still, it's clear she can't entirely ignore what is being said.
"Yes, it's personal for me," she says, sniffing back tears during an interview at her museum office. "People say, `She's too intense. She takes it too personally.' Well, how much more personal can it get than running your daddy's business?"
"We're beginning to wonder," says Brian Lewis of Paso Robles, Calif., passing through Roswell recently with his family, "if the real conspiracy is to draw in all the tourists."
Just because a story can be profitable doesn't necessarily mean the story isn't true. Is it wrong to make money from a story about crashed aliens if it really is true? After studying the Roswell case pretty thoroughly, I don't see how it couldn't have been a disc that crashed out there...
Originally posted by Diplomat
Just because a story can be profitable doesn't necessarily mean the story isn't true. Is it wrong to make money from a story about crashed aliens if it really is true?
Originally posted by Diplomat
After studying the Roswell case pretty thoroughly, I don't see how it couldn't have been a disc that crashed out there...
In 1947 I was a Captain, U.S. Army (Medical Administrative Corps) assigned to Squadron M (Base Hospital), 509th Bomb Group at Roswell Army Air Base. My primary duty was Medical Supply Officer for the Base Hospital. You would think that with all of the books that have been written, TV shows fictionalizing the incident, and the coverage the summer of 1997 in the media (major articles in the New York Times, cover stories in Time Magazine and Popular Science) that there must have been a great furor at the Base at that time (July 1947). To the contrary, life went on as usual. Most of the medical staff spent their time at the Officer's Club swimming pool every afternoon after duty hours. The biggest excitement was the cut-throat hearts game in the BOQ and an intense bingo, bango bungo golf game at the local nine hole golf course for a nickel a point!! There was absolutely NO unusual activity on the Base, no base alerts, no hysteria, no panic in July 1947. Life went on as usual.
(See additional comments below concerning the 8th Air Force football team)
In fact, the first I heard of this "cataclysmic event" was in the Fall of 1992 when I was called by Stanton Friedman to see if I could verify any of the activities that allegedly occurred at the Base Hospital concerning the recovery of alien remains. Friedman had found my name and picture in the 1947 RAAF Yearbook. My wife, Jane (who was with me in Roswell and who worked on the base), and I decided we had better try and find out what had supposedly happened. We did a library search and later obtained the Friedman/Berliner book and the Randle/Schmitt book cited above. What we have found is that much of what is in these books concerning the Base Hospital is incorrect and more fiction than fact.
In Crash at Corona, Glenn Dennis, a young mortician employed by the Ballard Funeral Home in Roswell, is reported as having brought an injured GI "to the base infirmary, which was in the same building as the hospital and mortuary." (p.116) Dennis is also quoted as saying he had received numerous calls from the Roswell AAF mortuary officer concerning sealed caskets. One of the photographs following p. 70 is captioned: "Rear of the hospital at Roswell Army Air Field. It was here that Glenn Dennis parked and walked in while small humanoid bodies were being prepared for shipment." Dennis, in his statements, tells of discussions with a young nurse, later identified as Naomi Maria Selff, who told him (Dennis) details about "three little bodies" being autopsied at the Base Hospital.
FACTS:
1. There was no mortuary on the Base. There was no AAF mortuary officer with such an assignment. As Medical Supply Officer I was responsible for obtaining, maintaining and issuing all supplies and equipment for the Base Hospital and any functions of a mortuary officer would have been within my responsibilities. I never met Glenn Dennis and I don't recall ever calling him for anything.
2. There was no nurse named Naomi Maria Selff assigned to the Base Hospital during the period I was assigned there (1946-1948). I was well acquainted with all five nurses assigned during this time and none of them anywhere near fit Dennis' description of the nurse he knew. Further research by UFO researcher Victor Golubic has determined that no nurse by that name was ever commissioned in the U.S. Army or assigned to the Army Air Force.
3. The photograph cited above is of a two story brick structure. The entire hospital complex was a World War II cantonment type, one-story, wooden frame structure. There were NO two story buildings and NO brick structures in the complex.
4. In their book, The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell, Randle and Schmitt state that a Major Jesse B. Johnson, Squadron M, 509th Bomb Group, (Base Hospital), was the base pathologist, who assisted in a preliminary autopsies on alien bodies. In their footnotes to Chapter 10, Randle & Schmitt claim that "Johnson's position as a pathologist has been verified by a number of former members of the 509th Bomb Group [and] verified by the 509th yearbook and the RAAF unit history."
FACTS:
1. There was a physician named Jesse B. Johnson assigned to the Base Hospital. However, he was a 1st Lt., not a Major, and he was a radiologist, not a pathologist. He had no training as a pathologist and would have been the last member of the medical staff to have performed any autopsy on a human much less an alien!! He is identified as a 1st Lt in the 509th Yearbook.
2. After I learned of these assertions, I called Doctor Jack Comstock, who, as a Major, was the Hospital Commander in 1947, and in 1995 was living in retirement in Boulder, Colorado. I asked him if he recalled any such events occurring in July of 1947 and he said absolutely not. When I told him that Jesse B. was supposed to have conducted a preliminary autopsy on alien bodies, he had a hard time stopping laughing - his response was: PREPOSTEROUS!!
3. Major Comstock lived in the Hospital BOQ, located in the hospital complex. Any unusual activity was immediately reported to him by members of the medical and nursing staff. He told me (this was in 1995 prior to his death in February 1996) that NOTHING of this nature occurred in July 1947 at the Base Hospital.
CONCLUSIONS AND OBSERVATIONS:
From first-hand knowledge, I am reasonably certain that no alien bodies were brought to the Base Hospital in July 1947 where "preliminary autopsies" were supposedly conducted. There was no nurse by the name of Naomi Maria Selff ever assigned to Squadron M, 509th Bomb Group. The statements made by Glenn Dennis are not credible. The accounts in the Randle/Schmitt book concerning Jesse B. Johnson are fiction.
Originally posted by Access Denied
and a newspaper headline that's most likely been taken way out of context.
Originally posted by Access Denied
You're kidding right? Do you honestly think if it wasn't for all the people who've lied over the years about what happened in Roswell in 1947 anybody would bother to go there?
I've got no problem with Roswell becoming the UFO "Capital of the World" as a result of what has, for better or worse, become part of their history. What I do have a problem with is the people who continue to lie or attempt to further obfuscate the truth in order to profit from it somehow.
Originally posted by Diplomat
ABC doesn't just get their information from some random yokel in Roswell, they get their information straight from the military themselves.
Originally posted by Diplomat
It just so happens that they were reporting the truth to the media at first, but later changed their story with a ridiculous explanation and gullible people like you believe it...
Originally posted by Diplomat
And also, just because some guy claims he didn't see anything doesn't mean others didn't. Maybe he's the one who's lying...
Originally posted by tezzajw
It's not just the locals who lied. Remember that the Air Force also lied, a few times... They had a huge part to play in creating the myth because of their lies.
Originally posted by tezzajw
How many tourists have been forced to Roswell and forced to spend their money? I'd like to see the place, just to say that I have been - regardless of the truth!
[snip]
If tourists want to visit a little town to enjoy a myth, so be it.
Originally posted by forestlady
If it goes to the town, it's for a good cause, right? How is this different from any other "tourist attraction" where people pay money?
Originally posted by Access Denied
Originally posted by tezzajw
It's not just the locals who lied. Remember that the Air Force also lied, a few times...
I disagree. It seems everybody in 1947 accepted the Air Force’s explanation (screw up) and went about their lives and didn’t think twice about it.
Originally posted by tezzajw
Then why did the Air Force later claim that it was a Mogul Balloon instead of a Weather Balloon? Is that not a lie from the Air Force, even if it was a lie made in the interest of national security?
Originally posted by tezzajw
The Air Force had a hand in creating the myth due to its own share of lies.
Originally posted by Access Denied
Well, that's really just a clarification of the truth isn’t it? Does it really matter what the balloon was actually for?
I see what you’re trying to say but I see little if no evidence that the Air Force was “nefariously involved” in any sort of official capacity after 1947 to obscure the “truth” about what happened in Roswell.