- FYFFE - You might expect the residents of a tiny town
that drew international ridicule over claims of UFO sightings to be tight-mouthed
on the subject. You might think they'd consider the little-green-men period
a black eye.
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- You would be wrong.
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- Mention of the time 12 years ago when the Alabama Senate
named Fyffe the UFO capital of Alabama, and when a British tabloid reported
that residents saw Liberace descend on a floating piano, still brings a
laugh to people in this Sand Mountain town.
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- "I wish we could get somebody to see another one,"
said Fyffe Mayor Howard Mitchell. "Our little restaurants would boom."
And so might the Fire Department, which cooked and sold hamburgers and
hot dogs to the thousands of skywatchers who flocked to the town of almost
1,100.
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- Fire Chief Bradley Waddell, who serves on the town council,
chuckled last week as he and Mitchell recounted the roads being clogged
with motor homes, satellite trucks and strangers tromping across pastures.
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- "The woods was full of people," the mayor recalled.
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- "It was a lot of fun," Waddell remembered.
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- "Oh, it was a blast," Mitchell added with a
laugh.
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- Events that brought worldwide attention and ridicule
to Fyffe started in the spring of 1989 when a resident reported seeing
a strange object in the sky.
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- Former police chief Junior Garmany and former assistant
chief Fred Works went to investigate and saw a large, lighted, triangular-shaped
object fly over without a sound. That set off a frenzy of sightings. Rumors
of cattle mutilations fed suspicions of mysterious visitors.
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- "Everybody got to looking and reporting, and it
just grew into a heck of a thing," Mitchell said.
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- But Works and Garmany, who have left the police force,
are less amused by the incident and aren't eager to talk about it. When
pressed, though, Works will recount the events of that night.
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- "I wouldn't take anything for the experience, but
I wouldn't want to go through it again," said the burly, red-haired
former officer.
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- The sighting
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- Works said he had just finished his shift that night
when the UFO call came. He laughed and asked Garmany if he wanted to go
check out the sighting. The two took a patrol car and headed away from
town. Soon, they spotted an odd-looking light in the sky and watched it
travel toward the brow of Lookout Mountain. After turning around and heading
home, they heard a radio call from a police officer in Crossville describing
a flying object passing over.
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- Works said they knew they were in the object's path,
so they stopped and got out. He still remembers his words.
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- "I said, 'There it is, Junior. It looks like an
airplane, sort of,'" Works recalled.
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- They watched the egg-shaped object move silently overhead.
Works said it was gray with a metal skin and had lights reflecting its
underneath.
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- "It was an actual craft," he said, still sounding
astonished. "It flew straight over our heads. ... There was no sound.
Not a whisper. It was strange."
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- Reports over the police radio that night spread and soon
at least 100 sightings had been called in. Works believes most of those
were hoaxes, but it was enough to get the attention of the local paper
the next two days.
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- The Associated Press called. Out-of-state radio and television
stations soon got onto the story, as did reporters in Canada, Australia
and even the BBC, which asked Works about the Liberace sighting.
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- "No, it was Elvis," he shot back on the air.
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- The excitement culminated a week after Works and Garmany
spotted the object, thanks to a newspaper report that UFOs were appearing
every Friday in Fyffe. Hordes of people headed to town the next Friday,
choking Alabama 75 for six miles.
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- "That Friday night was unbelievable," Works
said.
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- The furor eventually died down, but it never died out.
Works got a job in a factory in Scottsboro, where co-workers still poke
fun at him. He can laugh along with good-natured joking, but he still resents
the reporters who painted him and Garmany as hick cops.
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- They never said they saw anything other than an aircraft
they couldn't identify, he said. It was others who decided it was from
outer space.
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- Works said he is open to the possibility that intelligent
life is out there, but he suspects the object he saw was some type of government
craft. He'd like to see it again, he said, though he might keep quiet about
it.
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- People disagree about what the object was, but most agree
on one thing: Garmany and Works wouldn't have made up a sighting. If they
said they saw something, they did, Mitchell said.
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- Looking forward
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- While Fyffe's mayor is happy to jaw about his town's
strange past, he is more eager to talk about its future.
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- Fyffe is a town on the move, he said, as illustrated
by the development of a 220-acre industrial park, two miles of newly paved
streets, and extended water and sewer lines. The town recently got its
first traffic light, which hangs near town hall on Alabama 75.
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- "That's a sign we're doing something," Mitchell
said. "We're uptown."
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- However far ahead Fyffe moves, though, it may never leave
its ticklish past behind. And it appears that that's OK with townsfolk,
who recently decorated for a public picnic with air-filled aliens. The
Senate's tongue-in-cheek proclamation hangs on a wall in town hall. And
if residents forget about the wacky time E.T. came to visit, they are often
reminded when they leave town.
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- "Everywhere we go, people still connect us to the
UFO," the mayor said.
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- © The Birmingham News Used with permission
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