Perhaps it was a misquote, or mayhap it was done for dramatic effect, whatever the reason, the story written by 29-year-old Bill Bequette, a reporter for the East Oregonian, based on Arnold's story, coined the term "flying saucer."
Just who was Bill Bequette?
William C. Bequette was born on a Sunday, September 16, 1917, served in World War II, worked as a journalist until his retirement in 1985, passing away on a Sunday, April 24, 2011.
According to a Tri-City Herald editoral:
Source: https://www.tri-cityherald.com/opinion/ ... 12997.htmlBill Bequette influenced generation of journalists
Bill Bequette died Sunday in his 93rd year. His is not a household name in the Tri-Cities. But it should be.
From his home perched on the bluff where Washington Street ends in south Kennewick, Bill watched the Tri-Cities grow and prosper.
But it was from his chair in the Tri-City Herald newsroom that for 37 years he wrote, edited and directed the news coverage of that growth and prosperity.
He was no "joiner" -- so you won't see his name on any club roster in the Tri-Cities. In fact, he discouraged his reporters from such associations, claiming it could compromise their objectivity.
He was straight as an arrow, honest as the day is long -- and abhorred such writing as this sentence.
He joined the Herald when it was one year old in October 1948, after fighting in the jungles of New Guinea and doing his apprenticeship with United Press in Portland and the East Oregonian in Pendleton (where he wrote the first "flying saucer" story, after interviewing a commercial pilot).
Bill was one of the few on the Herald's small staff who had any formal journalistic training.
As a Herald reporter he covered Hanford before the Freedom of Information Act, when the Atomic Energy Commission treated reporters as a pesky nuisance and was putting out such news releases as one that said oak bark might be an antidote for radiation damage.
But Bill's major contribution to the community was not in his reporting. It was in his mentoring of a couple of generations of reporters. As city editor and later managing editor he was relentless in his -- and his reporters' -- pursuit of accuracy, relevance and brevity. He would not tolerate slack or superficial reporting.
He turned the Herald's newsroom into a more professional operation: one bent on straight news reporting rather than local boosterism.
In the beginning, with only a handful of reporters and only a few on the news desk, he would supervise, assign and oversee reporters, edit their copy, lay out pages and get the paper out by noon. And, in the afternoon, he would write editorials and assemble the next day's editorial page.
He and his staff were workaholics. His pink-sheet assignments were reporters' nightmares. Reporters complained -- but later those assignments turned into stories that won journalism prizes. One of his protégés won a Pulitzer Prize at the Oregonian.
Bill helped reduce the work week for staffers from six days to five and a half, plus coverage of one-night meeting, and he convinced the publisher that women reporters should be paid on a basis of their ability and not their gender.
He established many of the newsroom's standards on such things as accepting gifts long before they were adopted by the rest of the industry.
While many others took much of the credit, it was Bill who wrote the editorials that convinced the political powers that the Columbia Basin farm project should be built and expanded; that forced an interstate that was going to bypass the Tri-Cities to be built through it; that Hanford had to be diversified, along with the economy of the Tri-Cities; that as the nuclear reactors were shut down the government owed the Tri-Cities a future.
It wasn't all "heavy" copy. Each spring Bill could be relied on to remind readers when to plant their peas. And in the summer he told them how to cook their corn. His editorials emphasized that, along with a sound economy, we needed parks, playgrounds and a river environment that made the Tri-Cities not only a place to make a living but also a great place to live.
Bill was a gruff, tight-lipped editor who intimidated rookies and veterans alike. Yet he had a softer side when his Montana background surfaced. He was a skier, a hiker, a camper and a man who, along with his wife, Neva, almost annually won the prize for the Best Rose in the Tri-City Rose Show.
Retirement in 1985 softened Bill into a white-haired, grandfatherly figure who wrote weekly columns. The 1998 death of his wife, Neva, who was head of the Mid-Columbia Library District, took the fire out of Bill's eyes and the spirit out of his soul. He battled the plagues of age and in recent years had to resort to a walker as his ramrod spine bent.
But his resentment of incomplete and lengthy stories, and editorials that ran too long, remained.
A man who was a real champion for Tri-City causes is probably up there somewhere today complaining that this writer has gone on far, far too long.
And he's probably arguing with the Man Upstairs that the Ten Commandments could have been written in seven.
And offering to do the rewrite.
Bill: You will be missed.
And there is this...
Source: http://myplace.frontier.com/~roy83/gail ... index.htmlIN MEMORY OF
----------------------William C. Bequette Sept 16, 1917 - April 24, 2011
William C. Bequette, long time editor of the Tri-City Herald died in his sleep at home after a three year illness. Graduate University of Montana. WWII combat veteran, awarded Bronze Star, served from Oct 1941 until Sept 1945. He worked as a reporter and later Chief Editor of the Tri-City Herald until his official retirement in 1986. As a reporter and editor he was responsible for writing “probing stories on city government” and other insightful stories, including a nation wide story reporting one of the first UFO sightings in Oregon in 1947.
Bill continued to write including his autobiography and served as substitute editor for several years after his retirement. Even at age of 90 he continued to garden,cut his own lawn and wrote his autobiography from his war diary and memory
His wife Neva L. Bequette, 1910-1998 was the chief Librarian and founder Mid-Columbia Regional Library system. He is survived by two sisters, Grace Wood, Marjorie Gamwells, his daughter Gail B. Merkel, and 3 grandsons. A formal Memorial service is not planned.
The words, “no memorial services planned” can mean many things, usually that the deceased at almost 94, has outlived his family and friends. But in the case of Bill Bequette, arranging the logistics to find a single time and place in timely manner is not practical. (Etc)
Bill's UFO Story.
You can certainly tell a lot about a person when you listen to their tales. But I think it would probably be a mistake to conclude that they represent what they consider really important. If you judge by excerpts from various autobiographies, war tales consume a disproportion portion of their lives, based on percentage of the lives spent in that endeavor.
I found it difficult to talk to either my father or my Father-in-Law, Bill. I soon learned that my father had a “one up attitude” and Bill had a Reporters way of grilling when I revealed too much. In any event listening rather than talking was probably the best thing I could have done.
Both Bill and my own father served in the 41st Infantry division during WWII but in different Regiments so they probably never met. But my father’s two years in the Army represented a full 80% of his life tales, 10% where from his pre-WWII experiences and the remained were professional.
Bill left a far more extensive record. Bill’s verbal stories were 40% pre WWII, 50% WWII, and 10% was professional. If you examine his 193 page autobiography, 4 were pre WWII, 142 were WWII and 41 were professional a far different percent.
Of Bills verbal tales my two favorites were about the soldier in his unit who had such abnormally large feet that his replacement boots arrived in a wooden shipping box.
But Bill’s UFO story that he wrote June 1947 while a reporter in Pendleton Oregon had to be my favorite. According to Bill a private pilot with over 1,200 hours flying experience and a successful businessman and a father named Kenneth Arnold walked into the newspaper office.
Bill and an Associate editor listed to his account of a saucer shaped craft flying between Mt Rainer and Mount Adams at a spend estimated at 1,2000 MPH. Arnold simply wanted to know if the military was testing some new kind of craft in the area. Neither of the two reporters took the story that seriously but promised to write a short article on his account and to contact him if they received any more information.
Bill told me that to him it was just another story told by someone who appeared very creditable. The 5 paragraph story was written and posted to the local AP wire serve. Then according to Bill, “he went to lunch”. To him it was nothing more than an insignificant story and a way to earn, “a little beer money”.
When Bill returned from lunch the “office girl” was frantic having received telephone calls from as far away as New York and Canada requesting follow up information.
Bill then spent the next several hours gathering as many additional facts as he could from Arnold. When ever he told the story, he never saw a flying saucer, but simply did his job and reported.
This attitude also shows the great generation gap when a reporter today often feels it is duty to sharp the story to serve a particular viewpoint and not simply report the facts as he learns them.
And finally, there is this...
Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/ ... rs/372732/Excerpt from the article, The Man Who Introduced the World to Flying Saucers
But what happened next—the precise manner in which flying saucers, as a concept, transferred from the mind of Kenneth Arnold to that of the nation—remains unclear. We know that Arnold had mentioned saucers in his discussions with reporters; but was he being literal, or metaphorical? Stories of the time credit Arnold with using the terms "saucer," "disk," and "pie-pan" in his description of the objects he'd seen.
Arnold himself, however, would say that he was misquoted—or, at least, taken out of context. Some argue that the entire idea of a flying saucer was based on a reporter's misunderstanding of Arnold's "like a saucer" description as describing a saucer itself—making it "one of the most significant reporter misquotes in history." A 1970 study reviewing U.S. newspaper accounts of the Arnold UFO sighting concluded that the term had been introduced by an editor or headline writer, since the bodies of the early Arnold news stories didn't mention "flying saucers" or "flying discs."
So who was Bill Bequette? The man whose words changed the world.
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