Spaceviewer

History

The U.F.O. Study Club of Kansas City, Missouri published The Spaceviewer with Dwight L. Bockman as editor. By January 1959 (Volume 1, Number 7), Bockman was listed at 10915 West 57th Terrace, Shawnee, Kansas, and had been appointed 1st Vice-President before being named editor by the Executive Board. Robert C. Moran (Route 3, Box 444, Independence, Missouri) served as 2nd Vice-President and Chairman of the Membership Committee. The newsletter's motto was "It was from a little acorn that the oak tree grew."

The club operated in the Kansas City metropolitan area, hosting lectures at Drexel Hall (Linwood and Baltimore, Kansas City). The January 1959 issue announced a second engagement for Betty and Helen Mitchell of Florissant, Missouri, who had spoken in September 1958 about their claimed contact with Martians beginning May 1957. Born in Carthage, Missouri, the Mitchell sisters were mothers (Helen with a daughter, Betty with a daughter and two sons) who delivered what the newsletter described as material "of a scientific nature" alongside accounts of space travel aboard a mother craft. Admission was $1.50, or 50 cents for juniors aged 12 to 17.

The newsletter also reprinted serious scientific content. The January 1959 issue carried Dr. Melvin Calvin's November 1958 lecture at the University of Washington arguing that "given the original physical conditions of the primordial earth, the genesis and evolution of life, including complex forms like man, have followed virtually an inevitable pattern." Calvin (who would win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1961) predicted that life, including thinking creatures, existed throughout the universe. A local member named Charles Bennett (2632 Cypress) was organising a systematic collection of Kansas City area sighting reports, offering to take statements by telephone (WA 1-8170) or tape.