Kenneth Arnold was the last man anyone would expect to report a flying saucer.
The son of a Montana farmer, Arnold was a no-nonsense entrepreneur. He owned an airplane and ran a business that was netting $50,000 a year - 22 times the average Idaho income in 1947. He was a nuts-and-bolts realist, a solid family man, an Eisenhower Republican.Fifty years ago this month, Arnold was flying his Callair home to Boise from a business trip to Chehalis, Wash. Approaching Mount Rainier, he saw nine objects silhouetted against the snow.
The pulsating crafts were so unusual and flew so rapidly that he clocked their speed. The incident lasted about three minutes. At the time, Arnold was 32. He would live 37 more years, but his life would never be the same.
When he landed in Yakima, Wash., he told some pilots what he'd seen. In Pendleton, Ore., reporters were waiting. He told them the objects flew the way a saucer would if skipped over water, coining the phrase "flying saucer."
Within two days, Arnold's name was in every newspaper in America. His report began the UFO era as we know it. The Boisean was briefly the most famous person in the nation.
He received thousands of letters, many addressed only to "Ken Arnold, Saucer Spotter." His three minutes over Mount Rainier made him a national celebrity, a local curiosity and, in the end, an embittered recluse.
The Texas-based Mutual UFO Network ranks Arnold's sighting on June 24, 1947, as second in importance behind the Roswell incident, in which an alien craft was supposedly recovered near Roswell, N.M.
George Eberhart of the Center for UFO Studies in Chicago calls it "the birth of the modern UFO era."
To commemorate the 50th anniversary, Arnold's daughter is writing a book - "June 24, 1947: Kenneth Arnold and the Birth of UFOs." Kim Arnold, Meridian, Idaho, was born seven years after the sighting but still considers it the defining moment in her family's life.
"I have a sister who still won't talk about it," she said. "Having a famous father who became famous over one of the most controversial issues of the century was hard on all of us. You know the family in `Close Encounters'? We were that family 30 years earlier."
The ferment generated by Arnold's report was in part a product of its time and place. The Cold War was in its infancy and escalating. Fear of nuclear war with Russia was rampant.
The only aliens to cross Arnold's mind that day were Russians. He thought the nine objects he clocked at more than 1,300 mph were military aircraft, possibly Russian. His motivation for telling his story was national security. Within hours, he was besieged.
Calls came from as far away as London. A religious group tried to install Arnold as a prophet. Other "prophets" predicted the end of the world.
"Anyone who had had any kind of UFO or paranormal experience showed up on our doorstep," Kim Arnold said.
Arnold's was the first of hundreds of reported sightings in the United States and Canada. Ten days later, on July 4, United Airlines Capt. E.J. Smith and his crew reported two groups of UFOs over Emmett, Idaho.
Longtime Idaho Statesman political writer John Corlett, now retired, made the Los Angeles Times with a story on a sighting from his backyard.
"Everyone seemed to be seeing them, so we decided to lie out on the lawn to see what we could see," he recalled. "What we saw I don't know, but there was a silvery sort of gadget. It looked like a silver disk. It was moving slowly but then took off and just vanished. No airplane could have flown that fast." Corlett remembers Arnold as "a very credible source. He didn't seem like a nut at all."
From the beginning, however, Arnold's integrity was questioned. Although the sighting occurred on a flawless summer afternoon and Arnold rolled down his window to eliminate reflections, skeptics attributed the sighting to everything from reflections to snow flurries.
"Those things were idiotic," said Greg Long, the Oregon ghostwriter of Kim Arnold's book. "His integrity as a pilot was questioned, which made him angry because he'd been flying since he was 16. He was an expert mountain pilot, but he was thought of as either incompetent or a liar. He never forgot that."
Another thing Arnold never forgot was a story in the January 1951 issue of Cosmopolitan. "The Disgraceful Flying Saucer Hoax" blamed Arnold for "igniting a chain reaction of mass hypnotism and fraud. . ."
Arnold was obsessed with proving his story.
In 1952, he published a book, "The Coming of the Saucers." "He founded the first UFO membership group, devoted to searching for explanations," said Ike Bishop, Idaho director of the Mutual UFO Network.
Arnold died of cancer in 1984. By then he was bitter and resentful, a man haunted by three life-altering minutes. He refused interviews, shunned UFO groups, avoided the public.