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From: Pat Parrinello <pparri@republic.net>
Date: Sun, 9 Mar 97 15:24:31 -0600
Fwd Date: Sun, 09 Mar 1997 20:01:34 -0500
Subject: Houston Chronicle UFO article - 03-09-97

Subject:     UFOs
Sent:        3/9/97 4:22 PM
Received:    3/9/97 3:08 PM
From:        John Toth, jtoth@bulletin-ol.com
To:          pparri@republic.net

Pat: This story is running in today's [Houston] Chronicle and
http://www.chron.com/

West Columbia library, doctor have their own 'X files'

By STEVE OLAFSON Copyright 1997 Houston Chronicle

WEST COLUMBIA -- The search for extraterrestrial intelligence
probably goes on in important, top-secret places, but in this
small town 50 miles south of Houston, look no further than the
public library.

In West Columbia, population 4,372, the library is UFO Central.

It not only keeps a healthy sampling of reading material on
unidentified flying objects; it also plays host to occasional
meetings of sky watchers who swap UFO stories and view videotapes
of blinking lights they believe to be alien spacecraft.

As a result, people with UFO tales tend to confide in the town
librarian, Sally Taylor, a good-natured woman who listens
patiently and keeps an open mind.

"It's very prevalent in this area," advises Taylor. "There are so
many people that come in and say something's happened to them. I
just give them Doc's number."

"Doc" is what everybody calls M.D. Wagner, who is not a doctor
but is the unofficial leader and father confessor of UFO watchers
in Brazoria County.

A soft-spoken man of 60 who lives in a log cabin west of town
near the San Bernard River, Wagner, a Dow Chemical Co. retiree,
has been organizing UFO meetings open to the public since 1992.
He admits his wife, Rose, "thought I flipped" when he told her of
his plans to hold his first UFO talk at the American Legion Hall
in Brazoria about five years ago.

Since then, the Wagners have remained married, and he's still
holding meetings, the last one convening on a recent rainy night.

He warmed up the crowd by saying: "Brazoria County is a real hot
spot -- has been for a long time. UFOs are real. Where they're
from, I don't know."

A group of 17 spectators listened patiently before speaking up.

A nurse told of seeing three aircraft emerge from a larger object
in the night sky. "They circled the mother ship three times," she
said.

A middle-aged man in a gimme cap said alien visitors are
interested in mining sulphur from the Damon area.

"They're watching us. They're studying us," he said, adding that
he has suffered "missing time." In UFO parlance, that means he
has been abducted but cannot recall what occurred because the
aliens wiped his memory clean.

A woman seated next to him said she has been having flashbacks of
being interrogated by men dressed in white smocks.

No one batted an eye at the stories, which went on for about two
hours, except for an elderly woman who occasionally cast glances
to either side and muttered, "My God."

These UFO believers are not alone. A poll conducted in 1995 by
the Scripps Howard News Service and Ohio University in Athens
found half of all Americans believe flying saucers could be real
and the federal government is covering up what it knows about
extraterrestrial beings.

In 1990, a Gallup Poll found 47 percent of Americans believe UFOs
are real.

Brazoria County UFO watchers don't need opinion polls to assure
them in their beliefs, however. Still, the UFO meetings seem to
serve a purpose similar to group therapy: It gets people together
and lets them talk about subjects they might not feel comfortable
discussing elsewhere.

The nurse who spoke of three aircraft emerging from the
"mothership," for instance, admitted she had not told anyone
about what she saw for two years until she attended the UFO
meeting.

"I didn't realize there was this much of it going on," she said,
sounding relieved that other people have seen things similar to
what she described.

Indeed, Bill Bertram, a 65-year-old Navy veteran and former West
Columbia city councilman, says the UFO meetings have given many
Brazoria County residents the courage to come forward.

"They've been keeping it to themselves all this time, thinking,
`Who's gonna believe me?' They're starting to come out of the
woodwork now," said Bertram, who says he spotted his first UFO
five years ago.

Of course, there are plenty of people who wouldn't dream of going
to one of the UFO get-togethers at the library -- including some
people who have seen startling, unexplained things in the sky.

Nancy Markham's husband, for example, was driving home on Texas
36 the night of Feb. 5 when he saw a formation of blinking red
lights bigger than a football field pass overhead.

"It shook him up," she said. "He doesn't believe in this UFO
stuff, but he almost went off the road and the guy behind him did
run off the road. He really thought he was gonna see it on the 6
o'clock news."

Markham, a 52-year-old retired hairdresser, asked that her
husband's name not be disclosed. She couldn't convince him to
come to the library and talk about what he saw.

"He says that's just for people with nothing better to do than
sit around and gossip," she said.

Maybe so, but plenty of people think otherwise.

"I could easily go into denial and become a total skeptic,"
declares Pat Parrinello, 48, a West Columbia computer programmer
who helps Wagner organize the UFO meetings. "But I want to know
where the suckers are coming from."

If enough other people do, the UFO meetings may become regular
monthly affairs.