My Dinner with J. Allen Hynek

[MikeSee]

J. Allen Hynek is mentioned so frequently by guests on the show. Sometimes it seems that just about everyone among the older guests claims to have known and worked with this former University of Illinois astronomer who worked as a scientist on Project Blue Book, and perhaps they really did. I'm dating myself a bit here, but when I was in college in the late 1970's, Dr. Hynek went on the campus lecture tour trying to sell his books and take advantage of the UFO hoopla that was being drummed up by the movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I was a budding student journalist when he came to my campus, the University of the Pacific, and I was offered a chance to go to dinner and interview him for the campus newspaper. This was an exciting opportunity for me. While not a UFO experiencer, I had picked up every book, magazine, and periodical about UFOs that I could get my hands on as a kid. Of course, I was intimately familiar with the controversy surrounding Project Blue Book as well as Dr. Hynek's later change of heart about the reality of these UFO events.

I and another kid went to pick Dr. Hynek up at the Stockton (CA) airport, and drove him to a restaurant for dinner. There, we two geeky college guys peppered Dr. Hynek with questions about UFOs, science, and his views about what people were experiencing. I have to say that for all of the opinions that I have heard ascribed to this man, Dr. Hynek was one of the most taciturn and uncommunicative people I have ever met. Dr. Hynek said that he thought so many people, including reliable observers, were having UFO experiences that there must be some reality to the events. And, he had a little to say about a typology he had developed for classifying the types of encounters that people reported. But, he had precious little else to say.

Perhaps it was just the confrontation with two geeky college kids, and this would be surprising because Dr. Hynek was a college professor. Or, maybe Dr. Hynek was suffering from traveler's weariness and was just too tired to talk. However, with all of the long silences, I must say that my dinner with J. Allen Hynek was one of the most awkward experiences that I have ever had.

Later, I covered his campus talk for the college newspaper. Frankly, I again found the discussion overly brief. Dr. Hynek talked about his typology for classifying UFO encounters -- I don't want to minimize its importance -- but had little else of interest to say. As I tried to write a newspaper article about the event, I found myself having to flip through one of his books to find material to fill out the space I had been allotted. My dinner interview wasn't noteworthy. The talk Dr. Hynek gave was uninspired. There just wasn't much that was newsworthy about what Dr. Hynek had to say.

I've thought about my dinner with Dr. Hynek a great deal as I've heard some of your guests discussing their work with the eminent ufologist. Sometimes I do wonder about who it is that they knew or worked with -- because he just doesn't seem like the same man I met.

--Mike

 

[dyingsun]

Thanks for that personal experience, Mike.
I am interested in this subject for about ten years now, and I see why Americans like to reference Dr. Hynek, to me he is just one of the very first 'public' figures emerging and also saying to be interested in 'odd stuff' back then.

Hynek, Keyhoe and Keel are the first that come to my mind when I think or 'early Ufology'.

 

[Kandinsky]

I've thought about my dinner with Dr. Hynek a great deal as I've heard some of your guests discussing their work with the eminent ufologist. Sometimes I do wonder about who it is that they knew or worked with -- because he just doesn't seem like the same man I met.

--Mike

Hiya Mike, that's an interesting account and I'll take your word for it. Often people with some authority, credibility or fame get a free pass in life. Some few months ago, I read an interview with someone else who met Hynek and they also found him to be a little bit cold and uncommunicative. At the time, they blamed themselves, but later decided that (on the day) he actually was anti-social.

Such things happen and we're all guilty of having days where we don't want to talk or repeat something again. I guess we have higher hopes of well-known people and overlook that they're just people like us.

 

[saucerwench]

There is a reason Hynek could not be very talkative with you or any other average person, which was his double life and ongoing alliegiance to Intelligence. Did you know that Hynek was paleepals with Donald Menzel? This link is an -most- intriguing article by Richard Dolan on his findings about Hynek. Hynek used to regularily visit Wright Patterson AFB, and be recieved by the Commander, and not speak to Hector Quintinella. Jacques Vallee asked Allen what they discussed, and the good Dr. bs'd, "The weather and foreign cuisine". Yeah I'll bet.

http://www.keyholepublishing.com/Some%20Thoughts%20on%20J.%20Allen%20Hynek.htm

---------- Post added at 09:42 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:31 PM ----------

I used to volunteer at CUFOS back in 1992, when their last and final office location was on west Peterson in Chicago. They were full swing into the Roswell investigation. I still have a Tshirt they had made about their Roswell project. I met Randle and Schmitt when they came over to CUFOS with their then-new co-authored book.
Back in the late '70's, I wrote to CUFOS when Hynek was running it from Evanston Illinois. (Then they moved to Glen(can't remember!) ) But my letter was about my sightings I was experiencing. This man came over to interrogate me. He was a Man-In-Brown! (Brown suit and brown car). He was a volunteer investigator for CUFOS, and lived in my then-hometown there, and worked as a----judge! Eek!