Twenty Minutes To Kecksburg: An Eyewitness Account From December 9th, 1965

N. Reiter

26 July, 2009

Backstory:

While not achieving the mythical status of the 1947 Roswell incident in UFOlogy, the Kecksburg PA crash retrieval of 1965 remains one of the most promising and multi-dimensioned cases of its sort, ever. The object near Roswell crashed in an isolated region, and the total number of civilian witnesses and story participants was far smaller than the number who witnessed both the incoming object, the crash, and the coordinated retrieval operation.

Leading the way in historical and scientific research of the Kecksburg crash is Stan Gordon, a native of the greater Pittsburgh area. For those unfamiliar with the story in its entirety, Stan is the only right place to start: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcOf-vAYu1A

Another pertinent article featuring Stan’s research may be found here.

One of the key features of the Kecksburg case that distinguishes it from Roswell and other crash retrievals of legend and lore is the fact that multiple military and civilian recorded either radar, seismographic, or visual accounts of "something" streaking in over the Great Lakes states on the early evening of December 9th 1965. Eyewitness accounts in the Kecksburg area pinpoint the time of the vaguely bell shaped object’s crash to a fairly narrow time window, at or slightly after 4:45PM EST.

The topic of this essay is a fascinating eyewitness testimony, recounted to me first-hand, of what was likely the Kecksburg object, approximately 15 to 20 minutes before "it" came in for a surreally soft landing against a hillside near that Pennsylvania hamlet.

Two Boys on Bikes:

In late fall of 2008, my UFOlogical colleague Pat Mason was performing a database sweep of historical UFO related newspaper articles from the year 1965, and found one of particular interest, appearing in the Titusville, PA Herald for December 11th. I quote the article in part here:

"...A fiery object which streaked through the sky over northern states was identified by astronomers Friday as a meteor of unusual size. White-hot pieces of the speeding chunk of cosmic debris apparently struck the earth and were blamed for setting a number of grass and woods fires. In Michigan, several children found strange metallic particles which may have been thrown off by the disintegrating fireball as it plunged through the air Thursday night.
Brian Parent and Larry Jones, both 11, of Livonia, Mich., said they picked up a piece of lightweight grayish fused metal about the size of a baseball, which fell into a field. Smaller chunks of similar material were found by children in Warren, Mich. A search for similar evidence was under way in states ranging from New York to California..."

By June of 2008, I was blessed again with the capability for performing SEM and EDS analysis on materials claimed to be found in conjunction with unusual event cases. The old article in the Herald stirred my interest, and left me pondering whether or not some person living somewhere might still own a small piece of strange metal that fell from the sky that evening in 1965. And if so, could an analysis of that material open up a new door to understanding the Kecksburg event?

Pat and I discussed it, and as time permitted, I began looking for the only party mentioned in the article whom I thought I would have a chance of finding, 43 years later... the 11 year old boy named Brian Parent. I crossed my fingers that the combination of the unique surname, and the modest size of Livonia, Michigan, could work to my advantage. It was a slim chance admittedly. People finding is large industry in its own right, but I had neither the resources or time to commit to a detective agency style search. But the Yellow Pages exist still, and one does what one can.

Several weeks went by, and in late December, I found Brian Parent, not in Michigan, but in North Carolina. One evening, I made my phone call and hoped against hope...

Mr. Parent was pleased to speak with me, and we immediately fell into a lengthy conversation about the evening "the meteor" went by. The events of that night were fresh in his mind, although he laughed as he indicated that nobody had brought that topic up in over forty years. Brian had lived in the Livonia area through high school, but then his family eventually moved south, as did he. He went on to become a sales manager, then later went back to school to become a registered nurse, a career he pursues to this day. I allowed him to tell his story undisturbed...

It had been a chilly evening, and Brian had just finished up his neighborhood paper route on his bike. His friend Larry found him on the street and was tagging along. Brian felt that the time had to be no earlier than 4:30, but probably not much later. Suddenly, Brian and Larry saw a blazing white "comet" flying silently across the early evening sky, defining a course somewhere from west to northwest, toward the east to southeast.

The object appeared incandescent, like a star or flare, and was bright, pure white. It was ejecting behind it a dense white contrail. Most striking to the boys was the lack of sound, and the visual impression of the nearness of the object to the earth. Brian and Larry both agreed that anything coming in that low had to be headed for a crash nearby, and so the pair sped off following the course of the object as well as they could, down streets and roads. Brian speculated that it had to have been lower than a typical jet airliner cruising altitude of the time, more like the altitude of a high prop airplane, maybe 2000 to 5000 feet.

The boys rode for several miles, Brian recalled, before deciding that the object was not going to crash anywhere near them. It had passed out of sight by that time, across Lake Erie or Ohio.

However, as the pair began to lose steam in their bicycle sprint, they noticed a plume of smoke arising from a grassy vacant industrial lot. It seemed like a good place to call the chase off, and so Brian and Larry investigated the source of the smoke.

Brian claimed that lying in the dry winter’s grass and weeds were several pieces of a porous light colored material – stones – up to about baseball size. The pieces had apparently been hot enough to cause scorching of the grass, thus the smoke rising from the spots where the material lay.

The boys waited for the stones to cool, and they took as many as they could find. Brian gathered 3 or 4, Larry found about as many. The boys rode back to Brian’s house, and told their story to fretful parents, who in turn phoned the Livonia police.

Brian recounted that for the next three days or so, the Detroit area media – the Free Press as well as local radio and TV, covered the events (as well as sightings by others in the area) and the boys had their 15 minutes of fame. Within a week, it was barely mentioned by anyone in the neighborhood, and soon faded from even family discussion. Brian and Larry put their meteorites in boxes and went on with school and life.

The only event to follow up in the weeks afterward was the arrival of a man claiming to be (as best Brian could recall) from the University of Southern California. The scientist took one, perhaps two of Brian’s stones. Some months later, Brian remembered a letter arriving in the mail, presumably from the people who got his samples, stating that they were simply "slag". And that was all, for the next forty three years. No Men in Black, no ongoing intrusion by well meaning UFO researchers.

Brian indicated he had never heard of the Kecksburg crash, and admitted that while he was not skeptical per se, he had little interest in UFOs. His childhood event, however, did catalyze an interest in astronomy and meteorology that continued into his adult life.

I inquired after the wherebouts of Brian’s old friend Larry. Sadly, Larry had a series of tragic events in his family, fell behind in school, and eventually moved on to another school district, never to be seen again by Brian.

Had Brian kept any of the stones that he felt fell from the passing object that night? Yes, he remembered doing so, and had added them to his rock collection. I smiled inwardly, as I once again mused that there are two types of people in the world, those who collect rocks and those who don’t. Here was another brother of the Order of Rock Collectors.

Brian felt that despite three decades of moving around, there might be a chance that at least one of the stones could be found, and so he agreed that as possible, he would look for them. To date, he has not found any of the pieces, but who can say what tomorrow may bring. If he eventually does find one of the stones, he was agreeable to let me do some modern analysis of it.

For the meantime, I asked Brian to describe the pieces he and Larry found. He said they were irregularly rounded but porous, like pumice. They felt heavy enough to be metallic, and were a light grayish color. The boys had never bothered back in the day to see if the material was magnetic, nor exactly how hard or soft it was.

I thanked Brian profusely for his time, candor, and recollections. For his sake, he seemed delighted enough that his fifteen minutes of fame from 1965 had not been forgotten after all, and that maybe something more than a rogue meteor had passed over Motown that night.

To me, there is no doubt that the object Mr. Parent saw that evening was the object that slid into the ravine near Kecksburg fifteen to twenty minutes later. The prevailing estimate of the air speed of the Kecksburg object as it made its final beeline across Ohio to Pennsylvania is about 1,000 miles per hour. Livonia, Michigan is 254 miles as the crow flies from Kecksburg. If Brian’s observation of the direction of the object was correct, it had already made one of the proposed course corrections, and was on the straight line route toward SW Pennsylvania.

Thus Brian’s estimate of the time of his sighting fits quite well. Well enough for this researcher’s sake.

One last paradox arose in my mind recently. The white blazing object that Brian and Larry saw was silent. Nor was there any sonic boom heard, from a shockwave. This implies to me that either the object was travelling at just under the speed of sound at that time (unlike any meteor or re-entering satellite would be prone to do) OR the object was in some unusual state or condition such that it was destroying its own shock wave and fluid boundary layer. Extreme ionization? Who knows.

All we can say is that on an early evening in 1965, when the world looked a lot like a scene from "A Christmas Story", two boys on their bikes from Livonia, Michigan, saw a mighty and unknown fire come by… one that we may never know the truth about. But we can keep trying.

I would like to express my deepest thanks to Ms. Pat Mason, Mr. Stan Gordon, Brian Parent, and to Larry Jones too, wherever you may be.

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