UFO-Related Death of June 24, 2018?

Roswell, 1947

As I mentioned recently and have written of before, for ufologists, June 24th is of critical importance. On June 24, 1947, the modern era of UFOs began with Kenneth Arnold’s dramatic sighting of “saucers” flying between Mount Rainier and Mount Adams in Washington State. Since 1947, there is a history of this date being associated with ufologists' deaths.

Bill Bequette's first article using the word "saucer" appeared on June 25, 1947, and then, as a wire-service story, it spread around the world. 

The original press stories were written by Pendleton East Oregonian journalists Bill Bequette and Nolan Skiff. The phrase "flying saucers" appears in none of them but was invented by an unknown journalist or editor elsewhere (probably about June 27) on the basis of Bequette's wire stories.
Bequette, the paper's news editor, and Skiff had a first interview with Arnold in the newspaper office about noon on the morning of June 25, after which the intial stories were quickly written. The very first brief story by columnist Nolan Skiff, written just in time to make the bottom of the front- page of that day's issue of the East Oregonian, uses the phrase "saucer-like aircraft", proving that right from the start Skiff interpreted Arnold's use of the word "saucer" that morning to be a shape simile:

Impossible! Maybe, But Seein' Is Believin', Says Flier

Kenneth Arnold, with the fire control at Boise and who was flying in southern Washington yesterday afternoon in search of a missing marine plane, stopped here en route to Boise today with an unusual story --which he doesn't expect people to believe but which he declared was true.
He said he sighted nine saucer-like aircraft flying in formation at 3.p.m.yesterday, extremely bright -- as if they were nickel plated -- and flying at an immense rate of speed. Pendleton East Oregonian June 25 1947

Bequette had suggested to Arnold that a wire story might shake loose some information about the strange objects which both he and Arnold assumed were some sort of Army Air Force planes or rockets. He wrote a separate short story which he put out on the Associated Press wire that same afternoon. Consistently with Skiff's story it, too, said that Arnold (mistakenly identified as a US Forest Service employee) had described seeing "nine bright saucer-like objects":

PENDLETON, Ore., June 25 (AP) - Nine bright saucer-like objects flying at 'incredible' speed at 10,000 feet altitude were reported here today by Kenneth Arnold, Boise, Idaho, pilot who said he could not hazard a guess as to what they were.

Arnold, a United States Forest Service employee engaged in searching for a missing plane, said he sighted the mysterious objects yesterday at three pm. They were flying between Mount Rainier and Mount Adams in Washington State, he said, and appeared to weave in and out of formation. Arnold said he clocked and estimated their speed at 1200 miles an hour.
Enquiries at Yakima last night brought only blank stares, he said, but he added he talked today with an unidentified man from Utah, south of here, who said he had seen similar objects over the mountains near Ukiah yesterday.
'It seems impossible,' Arnold said, 'but there it is.'  ~  NICAP

East Oregonian reporter Bill Bequette and editor Nolan Skiff didn't figure the 191-word story they banged out that Wednesday just in time for the evening paper and The Associated Press noon wire would take off, well, like a flying saucer.
But it captured the attention of the nation.
The headline at the bottom of the front page of the EO for June 25, 1947, reads: "Impossible! Maybe, But Seein' Is Believin', Says Flyer." And in the seven sentences that followed, Bequette and Skiff reported Arnold's claims that on the day before he saw "nine saucer-like aircraft flying in formation" at an altitude between 9,500 and 10,000 feet between Mount Rainer and Mount Adams moving at "the amazing speed of about 1,200 miles an hour." The Military Times.

The Military Times noted straightforwardly, "Skiff died in 1970, Arnold in 1984 and Bequette in 2011."

Arnold passed away on January 16, 1984, and Bequette on April 24, 2011. 

Bequette's obituary began, "WILLIAM C. BEQUETTE Sept 16, 1917 - April 24, 2011 Kennewick, Wash. William C. Bequette, long-time editor of the Tri-City Herald, died in his sleep." It mentioned his place in "flying saucer" history. Skiff has been forgotten with the passage of years, except in the formal ufology literature.

Did the date of deaths of Arnold and Bequette have any significance (since they weren't June 24th)?

Why January 16th? The most famous "saucer-shaped" UFO photographed was the Trindade Island's  unidentified flying object, which was seen and photographed over Brazil's Ilha de Trindade on January 16, 1958. Arnold died January 16, 1984.

John Keel would often talk about the high rate of probability of ufo sightings late in April. April 24th always seemed like a good date for Keel. The Lonnie Zamora or Socorro incident was a UFO close encounter which occurred on Friday, April 24, 1964, at about 5:50 p.m., on the outskirts of Socorro, New Mexico. Lonnie Zamora, a Socorro police officer who was on duty at the time, claimed to have come closest to the object and provided the most prolonged and comprehensive account. After extensive investigation, the Air Force's Project Blue Book was unable to come up with a conventional explanation and listed the case as an "unknown." Bequette died April 24, 2011.

But who really knows? 

Kenneth Arnold opens the Modern Era of Flying Saucers, Washington State, June 24, 1947.

June 24th becomes a date to watch every year. It combines a celebratory date with the anniversary syndrome, with some milestone deaths tied to this point on the calendar.

Of course, death notices and announcements often do not come in until days (or weeks or months) later. Now, over a week into July, it appears one death may have occurred on June 24th with a direct link to popular culture ufology. 

June 24, 2018: 

Stanley Anderson

Stanley Anderson starred in Roswell's first season as the aging ex-government official looking for the truth about the crashed saucer - as a character who as a deputy sheriff was first on the scene of the 1947 UFO site.

Stage, film and TV actor Stanley Anderson, known for his role as the judge in the final episode of Seinfeld and as General Slocum in Spider-Man, has died on June 24, 2018, six weeks after being diagnosed with brain cancer. He was 78.

In addition to Spider-Man, his feature work included roles as the president of the United States in Michael Bay’s Armageddon and The Rock. His most recent film credits include Red Dragon, Legally Blonde 2 and Runaway Jury. On TV, he had a recurring role as Drew Carey’s dad on The Drew Carey Show and played the memorable role of Judge Vandelay in the final episode of Seinfeld.

Anderson also was a longtime member of three unions for actors, according to his family, and worked behind the scenes doing voiceover work in ads for Democratic candidates and issues across the country.

“He was most proud, ultimately, of the part he played in politics,” his family said.

Anderson was also in...

The X-Files (TV Series)
playing Agent Schoniger on
- "Closure" (2000)

-- Stanley Anderson (Agent Lewis Schoniger, who consults with Scully while viewing Mulder's regression tape) had a recurring role on The Drew Carey Show playing Drew's father.
-- Agent Schoniger is named for the next door neighbor of Chris Carter's grandparents....
-- The original script included a scene between Scully, Skinner, and Agent Schoniger discussing the fact that the Treasury Department was not happy that the records regarding Samantha's abduction were being pursued. The Official Site even ran the script crawl from this scene which was not in the final episode. Source.

Anderson, cryptokubrologically, did appear in...

The Shining (TV Mini-Series)
Delbert Grady
- "Episode #1.3" (1997) ... Delbert Grady


But Anderson's clearest link to UFOs came via his role (and his character's role) on...
Roswell (TV Series) - as James Valenti Sr., especially on one episode - "Secrets and Lies" (2001).

James Valenti, Sr. (through three actors) is a recurring character on Season 1 of WB sci-fi series Roswell.

A former Sheriff of Roswell, James Valenti (played by Anderson in the older role) spent his life attempting to prove that aliens are real. (This role appears to have been inspired by the real-life Sheriff George Wilcox, who told the Army about the Roswell UFO crash.)

The Westinghouse Broadcasting Network's series Roswell looked at what happened to the community's youth in the years after the UFO crashed there in 1947.

Deputy Valenti (played by a younger actor) at the crash site in 1947

From the Roswell wifi-files:

After serving in World War II, James joined the Roswell Sheriff's Department. Deputy James Valenti was at the scene of the Crash in the summer of 1947. Over the next twelve years, James became a father (Jim Jr., born 1951) and eventually Sheriff of Chavez County.
On November 16, 1959, Sheriff James Valenti Sr. discovered the corpse of James Atherton. That same year, Valenti investigated the death of an actress who died from a freak lightning strike during the filming of They Are Among Us in Roswell. According to makeup artist Bess Covendall, Valenti's investigations caused 'quite a stir'.  Valenti's efforts to uncover the truth earned him the ridicule of the F.B.I. and the nickname "Sgt. Martian". His eight-year old son Jim Jr. was an eyewitness to his father's growing obsession.
In 1972, Valenti met Everett Hubble. Valenti learned that Hubble's wife was killed in the same manner as Atherton; the killer leaving no marks other than a silver handprint. Hubble convinced Valenti that the killer had disguised himself as a drifter, and the two men tracked the suspect to a silo. Hubble shot the drifter, but Valenti took the fall. Valenti lost his job as Sheriff, beginning a slow slide into dementia.

Jim Valenti, Jr. was eventually forced to put his father (Stanley Anderson playing this role) in a home, where his visits have since become less and less frequent. Source.

Stanley Anderson's actual end-of-life health issues, with brain cancer, mirrored, in a fashion, his on-screen struggle with dementia, 17 years earlier, on Roswell 17.

###

Otto Binder, from 1941 to 1953, penned 986 of 1743 Marvel stories. He wrote 1971's "Liquidation of the UFO Investigators." Binder was one of the first writers to note the significance of June 24. Binder, himself, died October 13, 1974, the same day that American television personality Ed Sullivan also died. 

Here's my list of some notable ufo-aligned deaths on past June 24ths:

(1) June 24 or 23 (there is some dispute), 1964, Frank Scully, 72, author of one of the first crashed-saucer books, Behind the Flying Saucers (1950), dies.

(2 and 3) June 24, 1967, two British UFO contactees, Ernest Arthur Bryant, a contactee, and Richard Church, an author and chairman of CIGIUFO, die.

(4) June 23 (US) or 24 (UK), 1967, Frank Edwards, 55, popular UFO author and radio personality in the 1950s, dies a few hours before Arthur Bryant. Indeed, Edwards passes away shortly before midnight on the 23rd, which would have been the early morning of June 24th in the UK, thus being the same date as Ernest Arthur Bryant's death. James Moseley stuns the delegates assembled for the 1967 Congress of Scientific Ufologists at New York City’s Hotel Commodore on June 24th, with the news of the sudden death of Frank Edwards.

(5) June 24, 1969, Willy Ley, 62, a rocket scientist and Fortean author, dies. Willy Ley was one of the first respected modern scientist to attempt to answer the question of what is a flying saucer. In 1952, he was one of the first, if not the first person, to say that 85% of UFO sightings are misidentified craft, leaving the other 15% open to notions of "interplanetary travel," that he began writing about in 1926.

(6) June 24, 1978, Robert Charroux, 69, the best-known pen-name of Robert Joseph Grugeau dies. Charroux was a French author known for his ancient astronaut theories and writings on other Fortean subjects, in such books as Masters Of The World: Groundbreaking New Revelations About The Ancient Astronauts (1979).

(7) June 24, 1987, Jackie Gleason, 71, the actor, who was an early advocate of flying saucer research, dies. Gleason's known interest in UFOs allegedly prompted President Richard Nixon to share some information with him and to disclose some UFO data publicly.

(8) June 24, 2006, Lyle Stuart, 83, the renegade publisher who published anomalist writer Frank Edwards’ Fortean book, in 1959, Stranger than Science, a paperbook full of information on ufology and other unexplained accounts, dies.

(9) June 24, 2013, James Martin, 79, a former rocket scientist, computer scientist, and author of After the Internet: Alien Intelligence (2000), was found floating dead in the waters off Agar's Island. Dr. Martin bought Agar’s Island in 1977 and made his home in Bermuda. The multi-millionaire kept a relatively low profile in Bermuda.

(10) June 24, 2013, Alan Myers, 58, the most prominent drummer (1976-1987) of the band Devo, dies of stomach cancer in Los Angeles. Devo played punk, art rock, post-punk and new wave music, and performed stage shows that mingled kitsch science fiction themes, deadpan surrealist humor, and mordantly satirical social commentary. Devo recorded at their own UFO Studios. More.

(11) June 24, 2015, Mario Biaggi, 97, a former Bronx congressman was involved in the "UFO disclosure" movement, dies. He once was pictured on the cover of Ideal's UFO Magazine, December 1978, Number 4. Within the periodical, there appeared the following, "Interview: Mario Biaggi 'There Is A UFO Cover-Up By The Government.'" On the cover, an image of Biaggi was shown with President Jimmy Carter. More.

(12) June 24, 2017, Loren Janes, 85, a legendary stuntman and stunt coordinator, dies. He was involved in some intriguing UFO-related movies.

Loren Janes (also known as Loren James) was the safety stunt coordinator for the UFO cult classic film, Repo Man, which has its fair share of UFO insider jokes about flying saucers, the name game, Men in Black, and conspiracy theorists. He was in in Back to the Future (1985), for his stunts, and in the closeted UFO story of Steven Spielberg's 1941 (1979) too.

(13) June 24, 2018, Stanley Anderson, 78. See above.

Honorable mentions for June 24, 2018

Dan Ingram

The Voice of New York radio, Dan Ingram, 83, died on June 24, 2018.

As UFOs swept the area, Ingram was at NYC's WABC microphone November 9, 1965, when the power started going out before the Great Northeast Blackout. UFO reports during the 1965 Blackout.

Frank Evans Heart
Frank Evans Heart, American computer engineer (worked on first routing computer for ARPANET, the Internet's predecessor), dies at 89.


Carlos Lopez, Jr.

Carlos Lopez, Jr. dies by suicide (gunshot) on June 24, 2018. Actor, 2017, American Made (CIA Chief); Actor, 2014, Captain America: Winter Soldier (SWAT member) Actor/Writer, 2012, PTSD-An American Tragedy. Others.

George Cameron

October 16, 1947 - June 24, 2018

Left Banke drummer Justo George Cameron, 70, died on June 24, 2018 at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Manhattan after a battle with cancer. Born in Manhattan on October 16, 1947, George was the son of the late Justo and Dominga (Alvarez) Cameron.

George was a founding member of the baroque pop band, the Left Banke, which gained popularity in the late 1960s for their hit singles, “Walk Away Renee” and “Pretty Ballerina”. George’s involvement with the band remained until his death, often hosting reunion concerts and tours, releasing additional songs and albums, and performing at many children’s charity events throughout New York City.

The Left Banke's "Walk Away Renee": 

Misheard Lyrics: 

Don't walk away, Renee 

You won't see me in my UFO. 

Original Lyrics: 

Just walk away Renee 

You won't see me follow you back home.



Dale Arthur "Gabby" Park

January 18, 1938 - June 24, 2018

Dale Arthur Park passed away on June 24 after a brief illness. Dale was born in Trinidad, Colorado on January 18, 1938, to Glen "Tuffy" and Opal McLaughlin Park. He moved to Los Angeles with his extended family when he was four years old. After his grandfather died, Dale moved with his grandmother to the La Puente area and looked after her until she passed away in 1964. Dale started a career as a film stuntman a few years later. He also acquired a gorilla suit, appearing as a gorilla in several film, TV, and live performances. Dale married Laura (Doolin) Barton, the former wife of his late cousin Jerry Barton, in 1968. They lived in Covina with several dogs and other animals. Dale and Laura moved to the Victor Valley in 1997, in order to have a property on which they could keep their horses. Dale became known for his impersonation of Western sidekick George "Gabby" Hayes, appearing as Gabby at the Roy Rogers Museum and many other locations. He and Laura lived in Oro Grande from 1998 onward, including two years on the former Roy Rogers ranch. Dale was a longtime member of Victor Valley Bible Church, serving as an elder, and on a few occasions giving the Sunday sermon. He conducted many "Cowboy Church" services in the area. Dale was also involved with the Happy Trails Children's Foundation. He was an accomplished horseman, artist, and writer. Dale is survived by his wife Laura, and his stepson Kelly Barton of Oak Park, California. A funeral service is scheduled for 10am on July 6 at Desert View Funeral Home, 11478 Amargosa Road, Victorville, CA 92392. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Victor Valley Bible Church, 16349 Hughes Road, Victorville, CA 92395.
Published in the Daily Press on July 1, 2018.

###

June 24 and July 2 are World UFO Day(s), celebrating awareness of unidentified flying objects. There are two per year. June 24 because Kenneth Arnold had the first “flying saucers” sighting in 1947. July 2 commemorates the UFO crash in the 1947 Roswell (NM) UFO Incident.

John Keel was important, across the board. From Google...

Wednesday Phenomenon