Did I, as an alleged adult, believe in UFOs? Until Jess told me his story, I hadn't ever really given them much thought, one way or another. I was just a young, single mom trying to raise three kids, and found I had little time or energy for anything besides tending to the constant flow of crises that are such an integral part of parenthood especially single parenthood. Somehow, Jess's story awakened something in me; a curiosity about things rd never considered important. About the same time, a different "curiosity" was demanding more and more of my attention. A man to whom I had deferred as a boss became my friend. A man I had liked and respected as a friend became more. And, after a time, I realized that I was in love with this strong, gentle man who had such interesting tales to tell. As it turned out, he was experiencing the same kind of feelings. And even though I didn't get to start my portion of this story with a "once upon a time," I have to admit that it looks as though the "happily ever after" part rings pretty true.
After a time, not only had I married my boss, but I also inherited his three kids to add to the mix with my own three. Beyond becoming mother to the Big Sky Brady Bunch, I now had to deal with something wholly alien (pun intended!) to anything in my previous experiences: UFOs.
It wasn't so difficult from a religious standpoint. I'm a Christian with a strong faith in God, but even though I had been raised to believe that humankind was God's ultimate creation, I had long thought it would be somewhat arrogant to believe that God had created life only on this planet. It was more difficult from a matter of scope. I had just never given that much thought to life beyond that which we knew and were familiar with. Even the idea of strange creatures that lived at incredible depths in the ocean seemed unreal to me. Life with Jess Marcel, however, served to broaden my horizons, and as the years went by, I found myself forced to consider new and wondrous possibilities, ilia universe infinitely larger than I had ever known.
The years moved on, and we went from being the Brady Bunch to something more akin to Cheaper by the Dozen: two more kids, then grandkids. That I was busy at home was an understatement. Even that last statement was an understatement! What with my job and all the kids, I learned a new meaning for the word f azzled, and sometimes even wished that some alien ship would drop down and take me away somewhere quiet, if only for a day or two.
As the 50th anniversary of the Roswell crash approached in 1997, the discussion-and controversy-had again emerged, and Jess was busy doing television shows and conferences, and giving lectures on what he had seen as a young boy. After attending some of the conferences with Jess and hearing scientists, NASA employees, and individual stories told by some of the witnesses, I began to realize that this story is like a big puzzle with many pieces. It struck me that it would be awfully difficult for so many individual people from various walks of life to have manufactured this tale 60 years ago, much less sustained it all these years, without being members of a conspiracy beyond anything the fiction writers could have dreamt up. There were just too many stories-then, and in the decades since-that meshed together to complete the whole.
The one thing I had known for many years was that, as a child, Jess had seen and held pieces of what he and his father firmly believed to be part of a UFO. I was also fortunate enough to have been told the story by his dad, shortly before his death. Jesse Sr. came into the kitchen early one morning while I was fixing breakfast, sat down with a cup of coffee, and said, out of the blue, "You know, the crash at the Brazel Ranch that I investigated was not of this earth. It was scattered in a field over a large area. The rancher said his sheep wouldn't go near it. He had to take them around it for water. There were pieces of aluminum foil-like material, clear string or line that was like fishing line, and some I-beams. When you balled up the foil in your hand, it would open like it had a memory. We loaded it up into our vehicles and took it back to Roswell."
I asked him, "Did you see any little people?"
He answered, "No, just the foil and beams. It wasn't a balloon. I wouldn't have wasted my time on it if it were. It was said they found another crash site that had little people, but I never saw them. I stopped at the house on the way to the base to show Viaud and little Jess, because I knew that it was not of this earth. When word started getting out about what we found, they came out with a news report that we had found a UFO, and then they changed the story to a weather balloon."
"Did that make you mad?"
"Naw, I was military, and just doing my job."
"Didn't you think it was odd when they cleaned it up and then flew it away? Would they have done that for a weather balloon?"
"Hell, no! I was trained in this stuff, and I knew it wasn't a balloon."
I had heard this story before, of course, but it was the first time that Jesse Sr. had actually sat down and told it to me. Although he had spoken about the incident a few times to the media in recent years, he seemed to feel it was important to make a statement to me now.
Our next visit with Jesse Sr. was a sad one. It was June 1986, and Jesse Jr. had just returned from summer camp with the National Guard. I had spent two weeks in Disneyland with all of our kids and another Guard family, loaded into two vans. We had been home only a day when we got the call that Jesse Sr. was in the hospital and was not expected to live. Jesse Jr. had a private ENT practice, and had already missed two weeks of work attending Guard Camp, which was normally his "vacation." Nevertheless, we made a fast trip to Houma, Louisiana. As we'd been warned, Jess's dad died, and Jess took it awfully hard. I'd always known that Jess idolized his dad, but the sadness that hung over him really drove the point home. With the help of Jess's cousins, we packed Jesse Sr.'s house in Houma and loaded everything into a U-haul. Jess set out for the long ride back to Montana, while I flew home with his mother, Viaud.
Viaud spent the next 10 years living with us. On occasion, she would tell our friends the story of when UFO researcher Stan Friedman had come to the house in Houma in the late 1970s, and had asked Jesse Sr. about the Roswell crash. In later years, she developed Alzheimer's, and grew ever more distant from us. In spite of the challenges of caring for her, along with keeping everything else balanced on my already full plate, I am grateful for the time we had with her. One thing that still holds firm in my mind is the fact that you cannot live with someone for years, much less decades, and not know the real truth of who they are and what they say. The story I have heard from Jess, his mom, and his dad has never wavered, and even if I had never heard anyone else support the tale they told, I would know in my heart that it is true.
Although for me the specter of Roswell had long been an accepted part of life with Jess, I think my real baptism into UFO culture occurred at a National Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) conference somewhere in the Midwest. I don't remember the exact location or date, but I certainly remember the people. I've always been a people watcher, and the conference was a real smorgasbord for me. There were people from all walks of life-educated and not-so-educated, scientists and researchers, and believers of every stripe, from newagers to "tinfoil hats"-so I was in watcher heaven.
In October of 1988 we went to Washington D.C., where Jess was to be part of a documentary hosted by actor Mike Farrell called UFO CoverUp: Live! a two-hour prime-time syndicated television special that was broadcast in North America and elsewhere. Not being much of a television watcher, it was only after three days of rehearsal, while standing in a lunch line behind Mike, that I finally realized that he was Captain B.J. Hunnicutt from M.A.S.H., the one television show I watched. When I told him that it had just dawned on me who he was, he just laughed.