OCTOBER 2004
Even if she wasn’t abducted by aliens from outer space, Betty Hill was among the most interesting people in town. A few months before her death, she left a message on my answering machine. I called back.
“Guess what?” she said with that patented deep cackle thickened by thousands of packs of cigarettes. “I’ve got cancer.” She laughed heartily.
Betty had beaten cancer before, twice, she said. But this time it looked bad. At 85, she was sounding less convinced she could tough her way through this one. We had talked, off and on for years, about writing something together. She was, after all, the “grandmother of UFO abductees.” The pseudo-science of UFOlogy is based, in part, on her reported guided tour inside an alien craft in 1961 with her husband Barney. Interrupted Journey, the book of their alleged experience by the paranormally-inclined journalist ,John Fuller, is a classic. When Betty and I talked, as often as possible, she steered the topic on to other things–politics, science, genealogy. She was sick of talking about the UFO thing, she said, but she could always be drawn back.
After her chemotherapy, we talked just twice. We were planning to meet at her house on State Street. I dropped off a copy of my newest book and some UFO-shaped fruit candy. But she had become brittle. Walking in the yard soon after, she fell and broke both legs and one arm. We still hoped to meet, but the angels came.
A lot has been and will be said about Betty Hill. She herself said much of it, in endless hours talking to radio disc-jockeys, in school classrooms, among friends gathered in her kitchen, at UFO conventions, in magazines, and on TV. I once printed two dozen articles about her that I found on the Internet for her to read. She didn’t own a computer. “They’re all right,” she said, meaning that all the reports were accurate. She seemed pleased that so many people had spent so much time recounting and analyzing her experience.
Again and again she reminded me that her husband Barney had done many important things other than lecture about flying saucers. He started the Rockingham Community Action program. He was an activist for the NAACP. He was a good man, a civil rights activist, and a friend of the poor.
I bought a photograph of the movie about them on eBay. It is a publicity still from the 1975 TV movie The UFO Incident. The photo is signed by James Earl Jones, the famous actor with the barrel chest and booming voice. Jones bought the movie rights and battled to play Barney in the movie. “He [Jones] thought it was one of the best roles available for a black man to play at the time,” she said. Estelle Parsons of Bonnie and Clyde fame played Betty.
When the photo arrived, I was going to bike over and show it to her, but the morning newspaper announced her demise. I’m not sure I believe the media. For at least two decades, Betty Hill carried a newspaper obituary about her death. She mentioned it every time we met. “I’m not dead yet,” she would say, then laugh, then cough, then laugh again and take a deep pull on her cigarette. She was never ever dull, always twisting for a battle, never short on conspiracy theories. She was as full of life and spirit as six people have a right to be.
Despite what the scientists say, not everyone is unique. Hordes of people are as identical as cans on a shelf. They get their opinions off TV and recite their beliefs from books. I’ve been to large parties where not one soul could hold a candle to the likes of Betty Hill.
If those aliens really did give her a thorough medical exam, as she claimed, they have a pretty skewed image of the rest of humanity. She set the bar high and this planet is a little duller for the loss of her.
Copyright 2004 by J. Dennis Robinson, all rights reserved.
Prudy Randall Banding Birds