But before too long, both Truman Bethurum and George Adamski had to move over. Daniel Fry, an engineer, stepped in.
At a press conference to kick off the International Saucer Convention in Los Angeles, Fry told how he had not only contacted the spacemen two years before Adamski and Bethurum, he had actually ridden in a flying saucer.
It had all started on the night of July 4, 1950, when engineer Fry was temporarily employed at White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico.
It was a hot night, and with nothing else to do, Fry decided to take a walk across the desert. He hadn't traveled far when he saw a bluish light hovering over the mountains which rim this famous proving ground. He paid no attention. He'd heard flying saucer stories before and just plain didn't believe them.
But as he watched, the light came closer and closer and closer, until a weird craft came silently to rest on the desert floor not seventy feet away.
For seconds, Fry, who had seen missile age developments at White
Sands that would have dumfounded most laymen, merely stood and stared.
The object, Fry told newsmen, was an "ovate spheroid about thirty feet at the equator." (Fry has a habit of drifting off into the technical). Its outside surface was a highly polished silver with a slight violet iridescent glow.
At first Fry wanted to run but his rigid technical training overrode his common, natural urges. He decided to go over to the object and see what made it tick.
He circled it several times and nothing broke the desert silence.
Then he touched it.
"Better not touch that hull, pal, it's hot," boomed a voice in a
Hollywoodian tone.