Thursday, August 20, 2009

Tom Towers: Five Years After the Movie


On previous occasions, we noted Tom Towers' intense interest in diminishing the noise caused by sophisticated aircraft entering the "jet age," and at last we have further evidence via the 1961 letter scanned here. In fact, as director of the Los Angeles Sound Abatement Coordinating Committee at that time, Towers was actually responding to a letter and other documents regarding UFO sightings over Hollywood. Of even more historical interest, his reply was directed to the NICAP (see link in margin) Los Angeles Subcommittee, headed up by Idabel Epperson, a name well known to UFO research during its early years.


Unfortunately, standing out like a very, very sore thumb is Towers' typo about photography, where he actually meant to type how unfortunate it was that some "were not" able to obtain photographs.


Note, too, his postscript reference to the death of Edward J. Ruppelt, former Project Blue Book chief and off-screen advisor for the movie, "U.F.O." Not only does this indicate Towers was likely a regular reader of NICAP publications, but illustrates as well that he respected Ruppelt highly -- and he continued to do so while corresponding with me in the seventies.

Once again, I need to thank author and researcher Barry Greenwood for locating and sending along another piece of Tom Towers' legacy, shown here.