SUBJECT: SKYWATCHERS WAIT FOR UFOs                           FILE: UFO2025


BY JIM STEINBERG FOR MNW


FRESNO - The sky searchers carried binoculars, beach charis and a shared assu-
rance that they were not crazy.

Members and friends of the Mutual UFO Network had either seen strange flying 
objects in Central Valley skies or talked to others who had. Now the MUFON sky 
watchers scanned the starry night for further evidence.

The didn't think, they Kndw that they - and all earthlings - were not alone.
They sounded in turn scientific, religious, adventuresome. Some would say 
goofy.

The MUFON expedition dedicated Tuesday and Wednesday nights to taking a long
look and waiting for whatever or whoever might show up.

The MUFON party traveled up Kings Canyon Road, parked over 4,000 feet high in
the Sierra along Highway 180 at a clearing called McKenzie Heliport, - and
waited.

Roy Yates, 64, MUFON's state section director for Fresno County, was there. A
retired Marin County teacher, he pursued his quest from conviction despite
never having observed an unidentified flying object.

Debra Flanders, 43, a MUFON spokeswoman and field investigator trainee, had 
two sightings in her resume.

Use their names, they said. They would brook whatever doubt, laughter or deri- 
sion ensued.

Not so the third explorer, a self-employed Fresno professional, 35. His life
changed upon seeing something very large hovering above Norseman Elementary 
School at Weldon and Maple avenues one Sunday night in May 1975. Publication
of his name would kill my business, he said.

He and his parents were watching 60 Minutes on television, when he walked out-
side for cigarettes.

This thing was hovering, he said. It was huge, hovering over the school. I
could have thrown a rock and hit it.

It was round, he said, like a saucer, with white lights around its perimeter
and a turning light - similar to a disco sphere - spinning at its center.

I was not on drugs, not drinking, nothing, he said. It made no noise. I told
my parents. My stepfather ran out with my nother, and they got a glimpse of
the thing as it took off at the most incredible speed. It reached a point and
just disappeared.

I was soul-searching at the time of my experience, he said, looking for God.

MUFON investigates such reports, only a portion of which it verifies as being
truly unidentified flying objects. MUFON is a nonprofit international organi-
zation that announced in June that its Fresno branch was seeking more public
reports.

Some reports come from law enforcement officers, including two from Manuel
Amparano, 48, who is retired. He reported seeing things while working with
police departments in Orange Cove and Kerman.

He saw a red ball in 1973, spiraling down from the south east toward the hills
around Kings Canyon Road, he said last week. And at 3:32 a.m. on May 13, 1978
while on duty with Kerman police, he saw a fireball, an oval thing hovering 
above Del Norte and California avenues.

He was alone for the sighting, Amparano said, but people back at the Kerman
police station told him later that his face had burned and blistered in the
last several hours.


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