What truly separates The Roswell Legacy from previous accounts is the absence of a specific agenda, beyond my desire to fulfill the promise made to my father: to see to it after his death that the true story is told.
So this is my father's story, and mine. It may well raise more questions than it answers, but my hope is that at the very least it will move the Roswell debate from the fringe elements to a more reasoned forum. And I hope more than anything else that in some part, my efforts will result in history remembering my father as the intelligent, honorable man that he was, rather than the obscene caricature that has so often been painted of him. He deserves no less.
June 2007
Chapter 1
The Path to Roswell
To know the truth about the incident in Roswell, New Mexico, in the summer of 1947, and the decades of speculation that followed, it helps to know the truth about the participants in this grand play. Much has been written about the individuals involved-some of it quite accurate, and some not so accurate. It is my hope that, after reading my account of the events as I remember them, some of those inaccuracies might be corrected.
My focus in this book is to present you with a clearer picture of the man who was-and remains-at the center of the Roswell controversy: my father, Jesse Marcel, Sr. Although I must acknowledge my own bias, I realize that my duty to my father is to present him as the man he was, as accurately as possible, lest I fall into the same trap as those who have painted an unflattering portrait of him that reflects their own biases and agendas. I feel I am the only living person truly qualified to wield the brush.
Even so, this will not be the complete story of my father's life. But it will give you some background and perspective missing in most accounts.
In 1789, my great-grandfather and his brother, born of the royal Dauphine family, left their home in France to escape the carnage of the French Revolution. My great-grandfather moved to Louisiana, and took the name Marcell (which my father ended up shortening to its current spelling), while my great-granddad's brother apparently settled in French Canada. To my knowledge, the two brothers never saw each other again.
My father was born on May 27, 1907, in a place called Bayou Blue, in the Terrebonne Parish town of Houma, Louisiana. He was the youngest of seven siblings born to Theodule and Adelaide Marcel. Though they were in many respects an average farm family, theirs was, I am certain, an interesting household, with his mother-who as a small girl had once helped make horse collars for the Confederate Army-speaking only French, and his father raising crops. As with all farming families of that day, Jesse and his brothers and sisters worked with his parents on the farm, but unlike many other parents, his folks knew that a good education was paramount. They insisted on the children attending school, even during harvest time, when every extra hand was needed.
At an early age, my father became interested in a new device called radio. He read voraciously to learn all he could about this wondrous technology, and saved every penny he could until he finally had enough to buy the parts to build a radio of his own. His mother-who was of necessity a very frugal woman-would have been dead-set against wasting money on something as frivolous as this, so he had to hide the parts in a haystack. When his brother Dennis found his stash and turned him in to his mother, Dad was punished, but ended up building the radio anyway. I don't know if it worked, but I suspect it did, thus pardoning him for "wasting money."
After graduating from high school, my father knew that he wanted to continue his education, but was keenly aware of the fact that his parents were not wealthy enough to pay his way. He initially went to work for AM and JC DuPont General Store as a window dresser and stock boy, and doing other tasks as needed. While working there, he also attended classes at a graphics and design school at LSU in Baton Rouge. After working at the store for several years, he went to work for the Louisiana Highway Department, and enlisted in the Louisiana National Guard.
My father met my mother, Viand (pronounced vee-oh) Aleen Abrams, in Winn Parish, Louisiana. She had a familial connection to the colorful world of Louisiana politics in the 1930s, as her uncle was Oscar Kelly ("O.K.") Allen, a member of the famous Huey P Long political machine, and was governor of the state from 1932 until his death in office in 1936. Her mother was a full-blooded Cherokee, and the blend with my dad's French heritage made for a lively-not tumultuous-relationship. On a trip to California in June of 1935, they decided to get married before returning home in El Paso, Texas.
Not long after they were married, my parents moved to Houston, where Dad had been hired as a draftsman, drawing maps for Shell Oil Company. It was in Houston, on August 30, 1936, that I was born.
One of Dad's favorite pastimes was operating his ham radio station. In my mind, I can still hear him repeating his call sign, "William Five Charlie Yoke Item," (W5CYI) several times, and then listening across the bands to see if anyone would respond. He would spend hours at a time chewing the fat over every conceivable topic with other radio amateurs in every state in the union and all over the world. I like to believe that these signals from his transmitter are well into the interstellar medium by now. He was a member of the American Radio Relay League, an organization devoted to ham radio, and would exchange QSL cards with other amateur radio operators to document his contacts. (For those not familiar with ham radio, the threeletter Q-codes were created in 1909 by the British government as a list of abbreviations for the use of British ships and coastal stations. QSL means either "Do you confirm receipt of my transmission?" or "I confirm receipt of your transmission.")
When I was only about 4 years old, half of the two-car garage at our house on Amherst Street in Houston was set up as my father's radio shack, and the rest was devoted to his small sills-screening company, where he made and sold simple signs. His home-built transmitter used mercury vapor rectifiers, the 866 vacuum tube, the venerable gas-filled tubes that would glow with a bluish color that fluctuated in brightness as he would talk. This was quite impressive to a little kid. Dad held a first-class radio operator's license, which would allow him to operate a full 1-kilowatt transmitter.
Among the hundreds of people with whom he communicated, my father made friends with some Japanese operators living in San Francisco around 1939 to 1940. He had a chance to visit them, and was astounded when he saw their equipment-huge assemblies capable of transmitting 50 kilowatts, far greater than the capacity of your typical amateur operator's rig. Their apartment, beyond being filled with a mass of radio equipment, afforded them a panoramic view of San Francisco Bay and ship movements. After the war, my father learned that his fellow "hobbyists" were actually Japanese spies. I guess that explained how they could afford such impressive equipment!
On December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor was bombed, and shortly afterward, my father voluntarily enlisted in the Army Air Force, and soon left for Washington to take his enlistment physical.