Jesse-Marcel-Obituary

Dr. Jesse Marcel Jr.

Obituary

HELENA, Mont. (AP) - Dr. Jesse Marcel Jr., who said he handled debris from the 1947 crash of an unidentified flying object near Roswell, N.M., has died at the age of 76.

Denice Marcel said her father was found dead at his home in Helena on Saturday, less than two months after making his last trip to Roswell. He had been reading a book about UFOs. Over the past 35 years, Marcel Jr. appeared on TV shows, documentaries and radio shows; was interviewed for magazine articles and books, and traveled the world lecturing about his experiences in Roswell.

"He was credible. He wasn't lying. He never embellished - only told what he saw," his wife Linda said.

Marcel's father was an Air Force intelligence officer and reportedly the first military officer to investigate the wreckage in early July 1947. Marcel Jr. said he was 10 when his father brought home some of the debris, woke him up in the middle of the night and said the boy needed to look at it because it was something he would never see again.

His father maintained the debris "was not of this Earth," Linda Marcel said. "They looked through the pieces, tried to make sense of it."

The item that Marcel Jr. said fascinated him the most was a small beam with some sort of purple-hued hieroglyphics on it, she said.

After an initial report that a flying saucer had been recovered on a ranch near Roswell, the military issued a statement saying the debris was from a weather balloon.

"They were told to keep it quiet and they did for years and years and years," Linda Marcel said. Interest in the case was revived, however, when physicist and UFO researcher Stanton Friedman spoke with Jesse Marcel Sr. in the late 1970s.

Friedman wrote the foreword to Marcel Jr.'s 2007 book "The Roswell Legacy," and described him as a courageous man who "set a standard for honesty and decency and telling the truth."

"His legacy is that he had the courage to s peak out when he didn't have to about handling wreckage that his Dad brought home," Friedman said Tuesday. "He worked with artists to come up with what the symbols on the wreckage looked like. He didn't have to do that. He could have kept his mouth shut. A lot of people did."

On his last trip to Roswell in early July, UFO researcher and Earth science professor Frank Kimbler arranged for Marcel to visit his childhood home and the debris site.

"I remember my dad did say that he loved the ride up to the site that day because he was able to discuss science with Frank," Denice Marcel said in an email to The Associated Press. "One thing about my Dad, he was always reading something on astronomy or some kind of scientific journal. He loved astronomy with a passion."

Marcel Jr. graduated from medical school at Louisiana State University School of Medicine in 1961 and joined the U.S. Navy in 1962. He retired after nine years and later joined the Montana Army National Guard and became a flight surgeon in 1981. He was called back to active duty in October 2004 and served as a flight surgeon in Iraq for just over a year. He reached the rank of colonel.

He worked as an ear, nose and throat doctor and retired from the Veterans Administration Hospital at Fort Harrison, west of Helena, all of which lent credibility to his story.

"I know that one of the things that Dad would love to say is, 'If we are the only ones here then there is an awful lot of wasted space out there,'" Denice Marcel said. "He wasn't the first one to say this, but he did believe it. He also believed that everyone needed to know the truth, and that the Roswell Incident was a real event and that it was time for the cover-up to stop."

He is survived by his wife and eight children. Funeral services are pending.

AMY BETH HANSON, Associated Press




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My deepest sympathy to the Marcel Family. There are a lot of nice posts here.... There have been, and continue to be many amazing people in this country, doing some incredible things, and we will never know who most of them are. I gotta say, I never put much credibility in the Roswell story. I knew very little about the incident and nothing of the names of those involved... Sounded more like one of those old urban legends, or maybe a ghost story you would tell around a campfire late at...

I worked under him at Great Lakes in the early 70s. Most pleasant man I've ever known or worked for.

rad dude. did not know him. here for an ap lang assignment. i like roswell.

Having had two sightings myself,I have to believe as Jesse did the fact that we are not alone in the universe and I commend him for his constant unwavering attitude towards this fact! Jim salkeld Petaluma. Can.

I had a chance encounter with Dr. Marcel at the Sun N' Fun Fly-In at Lakeland Linder Airport. I was admiring a beautiful Velocity Experimental Aircraft, when the pilot owner came up to me. We talked.
I consider that evening to be one of the highlights of my life. Here it is, five years after his passing, and I could not treasure the hour we spent together with more gratitude.
To all posterity, who read this, let it be known, he was a real man, with stellar ambitions, deep...

The world and the UFO community will miss this man.

I'm so sorry for the loss of a great and honest man.

May the lord bless Jesse's soul. He seemed such a nice genuine person from reading his book and he never waivered from telling the truth. Long may his story live on and my condolences from across the pond to the family.