Hey, Phoenix, we've got first dibs on UFOs

ANNE T. DENOGEAN
Published: 04.25.2008

Some jokester with flares, helium balloons and too much time on his hands has claimed responsibility for the four mysterious red lights that appeared in the Phoenix skies Monday.

I'm not surprised it was a hoax. If aliens are searching for intelligent life on Earth, Phoenix is the last place they would look.

Settle down, my Phoenician friends. That was just a joke, born out of momentary pangs of Venus-envy.

You see, Phoenix can boast of professional sports, crosstown freeways and, yes, even one notable strange-lights-in-the-sky episode in 1997. But Tucson has always laid claim to arguably the richest history in the state when it comes to UFO sightings and, umm, research.

Until 1988, Tucson was home to the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization, which was the largest and oldest group in the world studying UFO reports. Starting in 1952, APRO, operated by the husband and wife team of Jim and Coral Lorenzen, studied and catalogued 40,000 sightings around the world. At its peak, APRO had an international membership of 4,000 and the most extensive UFO library in the world.

The Lorenzens sent out a monthly newsletter and ran a 24-hour UFO sighting report hot line. APR0 folded in 1988 after the deaths of Jim Lorenzen in 1986 and his wife in 1988.

A University of Arizona physicist, the late James E. McDonald, was one of the most prominent UFO researchers of the 1960s, until his death by suicide in 1971.

He spoke on the topic before audiences around the world, including testifying at a 1968 congressional hearing. He was a leading critic of the U.S. Air Force's 18-year investigation of UFOs, Project Blue Book, calling the effort incompetent and superficial.

UFO enthusiasts Ted Loman, Jim Nichols and Peggy Kane brought UFO lore to the local airwaves in 1991 with an Access Tucson cable program called, "UFOAZ Talks," replaced in 1997 by Loman's "Off the Record" show. After Loman moved to Idaho in 2002, Jim Rodger, the director of Loman's shows, started his own program in 2003, "The Cutting Edge." The twice-monthly program delves into UFOs, ancient mysteries and the paranormal.

Loman took his work seriously but had a sense of humor about his exploits. When I interviewed him in 1997, he got a kick out of telling me about the time he and his friends zoomed through the streets of Tucson at 60 miles per hour in pursuit of a UFO that turned out to be a Goodyear blimp.

Tucson even has its own resident UFO debunker in retired Air Force Maj. James McGaha. Often called by media to provide a skeptic's point-of-view, McGaha most recently appeared in a January episode of "Larry King Live" about strange lights in the skies over Stephenville, Texas.

The Tucson Citizen archives are filled with stories, dating back to 1959, of odd objects in our own skies. Some were explained as natural phenomena, weather balloons, missiles and aircraft in follow-up stories. Some were the work of mischievous youngsters, such as a rash of sightings in 1962 that turned out to be balloons sent aloft with candles by a trio of UA students.

But the archives also include some unexplained doozies, including a 1966 report of a large, bright, egg-shaped object hovering near the border (insert your own "illegal alien" or Russell Pearce joke here).

Earlier this week, Tucsonan George Parks, state director of the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), told me he investigates about 35 sightings a year.

He often hears the same opening line: "'Man, I got a story to tell you, but you ain't going to believe it.'"

"Well, I am going to believe it because I'm going to listen to it with an open mind and an open heart," said Park, who invited anyone with a sighting report to call him at 742-6651.

MUFON meets every month at the Pima County Public Library, Murphy-Wilmot Branch, 530 N. Wilmot Road, The next meeting is 1 p.m. May 17.
Parks, a resident of Tucson for most of his 72 years, said he's seen UFOs throughout his life. He knows such a statement opens him up to ridicule, but he doesn't much care.

It's easy to see, Parks said, "that there's things out here that just don't look kosher."

So, Phoenix, you can try to steal our spring training but, please, leave the UFOs to us.