Tributes To Walter Haut

     I first met Walter Haut in the 1990s. He was the consumate gentleman who always had a kind word and a mischievious smile. He was stalwart in his assessment that his fame in the UFO community and beyond was undeserved. Of course, he was as wrong as he could be, as history has a way of illuminating a moment in time.

      Over the years I had the opportunity to sit and visit with him privately and in groups. I interviewed him twice for the record. Once was in 1999, when a French film production company visited me and I took them to Roswell to meet Walter. It was during that filming session that Walter admitted to me the first of several blockbusters. I asked him if the alleged disc recovery was a cover-up. He replied that it was and admitted for the first time that he actually was in the meeting when General Roger Ramey declared that the disc recovery was to be denied and that the weather balloon story would be the cover story.

      In 2001, Dennis Balthaser and I interviewed Walter for the record and recorded it on digital tape. It was during that interview that we discovered things about Walter that nobody outside his family really knew. Walter was very generous and left for history his acknowledgment that he had actually seen the wreckage and the body, which he described for us.

      Fame never altered Walter Haut. He remained a soft-spoken man who loved to see young people visit the museum. His hope was that they would get a better understanding of Ufology and maybe, just maybe, they might be led to eductional rewards in science.

      I shall miss his easy-going smile. I do remember one tidbit I haven't really shared with many in the field of Ufology. While the French film team was at the museum, I talked with Walter off the record. I told him that I thought the most obvious place to take a recovered alien body(s), would be the infamous Lovelace Clinic. It was founded by Col. William R. Lovelace in the 1940s and many classified projects were performed there for the government. Walter leaned back against the front visitor counter and smiled for a long, long time. He said, "You are extremely astute." Of course I tried to get him to open up more, but his smile and he walked slowly away.

      A bombadier who flew through the mushroom cloud of an atomic explosion and gave the world news of a crashed flying disc, has no doubt trumped us all.

Rest Well, Walter

Wendy Connors
Faded Discs

******************************

     It should be noted that the headlines, in evening papers from Chicago West, saying a saucer had been captured near Roswell were in newspapers for July 8, 1947, not July 9. The cover story.. balloon- radar reflector - went out late that day and did appear in the final edition of the Los Angeles Herald Express. All the July 9 papers carried the cover story.

1. I was the first UFO researcher to locate and speak with Walter way back in late 1978. He was always helpful and was very well respected in Roswell. He also had been a bombardier-navigator on more than 20 bombing missions over Japan during World War

2. He knew about following orders. Dr. Joseph Nickel, CSICOP's science investigator (his 3 degrees are in English)tried to tell a TV audience that the PIO just made up the story. I was on from Roswell and asked if he even knew the PIO's name. Of course he didn't. The notion that Walter would have put out the release on his own is absurd considering that the 509th was the most elite military group in the world and that base Commander Colonel William Blanchard, a West Pointer, went on to get 4 more promotions clearly indicating he knew what he was doing. Remember this was 1947.

Walter will be remembered fondly by all who knew him. Condolences to his daughters and grand children.

     Stan Friedman