Thursday, January 23, 2020

Book Review: The Children of Roswell by Thomas J. Carey and Donald R. Schmitt

I've always been interested in Roswell, and a trip to the Roswell UFO Festival inspired me to start this blog, so when I came across The Children of Roswell: A Seven-Decade Legacy of Fear, Intimidation, and Cover-Ups on Amazon, of course I had to order it. I've read a lot of books about Roswell, and this one is the most fascinating. Thomas J. Carey and Donald R. Schmitt tell the stories of the children of people who witnessed what happened in Roswell in July 1947, and these stories strengthened my belief that it was indeed a UFO that crashed in Roswell. (It seems pretty extreme for the military to threaten to kill entire families it if was just a weather balloon, doesn't it?)

A few things I learned from the book:

-Around the time of the Roswell incident, there were more UFO sightings in New Mexico than any other state in America.
-Lieutenant Governor Joseph Montoya was on the Roswell airbase when the wreckage first arrived; freaked out by what he saw, he called Pete and Ruben Anaya (two of his political supporters) to come pick him up and proceeded to get drunk at Pete's house after telling the men that he saw a spaceship and "little bodies with big heads" (pg. 63). Sheriff George Wilcox told Pete that he'd be killed if he told anyone and that his family would be killed as well.
-During a 2006 visit to the Roswell UFO Museum, Sue Farnsworth said that when she was a child, her father told her that a flying saucer had crashed near their ranch and that the military threatened to kill the family if he ever told anyone what he saw.
-Michelle Penn was told by her foster father (Hunter Penn) that the crash was of an extraterrestrial nature and that he was (as an Army Air Forces officer) authorized to use force and intimidation to keep witnesses quiet.
-The daughters of Sheriff Wilcox said that their father wished he had called the press before the military in order to prevent the military from covering things up. George told his wife that he saw four little big-headed men (three dead, one alive) in the wreckage, and the military later threatened to kill the family if he told anyone about what he saw.

I knew that the military had threatened many of the witnesses, but reading about it from the perspective of the (now grown-up) children made it easy for me to imagine the fear those families felt. The way the military handled the Roswell crash was infuriating, and I'll never understand how anyone could think that threatening to kill witnesses and their families was an appropriate way to handle things. The Children of Roswell is a must-read for anyone who's interested in Roswell, UFOs, or cover-ups, so make sure you check this one out. 🙂👽

My rating: 8.5/10



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