Joseph Messer:
CLASS OF 1964
King High SchoolClass of 1964
Tampa, FL
Joseph's Story
After graduation I applied for a fingerprint specialist position with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Washington, D.C. and was accepted. I spent two years in Washington as a fingerprint technician, resigned my position, and then returned to Tampa to start my University degree. I reapplied with the FBI in Tampa, was accepted, and worked there full time as a clerk-teletype operator and attended school part-time until I received my B.A. in Anthropology-Archaeology (minored in Geology) in March 1972 from the University of South Florida. During my University experience I visited a variety of paleo-archaeological sites in Mexico, Central, and South America. After passing rigorous physical and intellectual tests, I took my Oath of Office as a Special Agent of the FBI on June 6th, 1972 in the Old Post Office Building (Former Trump Hotel) on Pennsylvania Avenue. I received an appointment to the New Agents Class (NAC10) for FBI Agent appointees at the FBI Academy Quantico, Va. After successfully completing my required sixteen weeks training in Law, Self-Defense, Surveillance, Counter-surveillance techniques, Photography, Firearms (I was hell on wheels with a shotgun and on many a raid I found myself holding a shotgun backing up my fellow FBI Agents during raids), evidence collection, and crime scene investigations, I received my first posting as a SpecialAgent to the Columbia, S.C. Division of the FBI and spent two years doing criminal investigations assigned to the Charleston, S.C. Resident Agency. I was then posted to the New York City Division of the FBI in December 1974 where I specialized in Foreign Counter-intelligence operations against Soviet targets, including undercover operations. My desire, after spending years in cold country, was to return to Florida and I listed my Office of Preference as the Jacksonville Division. January 1983 I was transferred to the Jacksonville Division, Gainesville Resident Agency where I specialized in Foreign Counter-Intelligence investigations, Counter-Terrorism operations, and some General Criminal Investigations (put a lot of bad guys and gals in jail) until I retired in January 1997 as the Senior Resident Agent at the age of 50. During my 30 year career with the FBI I received numerous commendations including one for the rescue of a young kidnapping victim and a successful espionage investigation which resulted in the deportation of an East European Intelligence Agent. Having loved learning all my life, after I retired at the young old age of 50, I set myself a new goal.....a Degree in Art-Studio Painting. I took my lower level Art courses at Santa Fe College and upon completion I submitted my portfolio and was accepted into the University of Florida degree program where I attained my second Degree. I have two sons, two step-daughters, two divorces, and seven grand children. My oldest son obtained his Masters Degree in Computer Technology and was the Chief IT Specialist with the City of Chattanooga, Tennessee and my youngest son graduated with honors from the University of Texas -San Antonio and is a Major in the US Army stationed at Fort Leavenworth, KS attending the US Army Command and General Staff College. He is currently under transfer to the US Army Forces Command at Fort Liberty, NC. He is an Iraq combat veteran as an enlisted man, (two long years waiting for that dreaded phone call telling me he was KIA that almost did me in) and when he came home I told him I would personally kick his skinny ass if he reenlisted without a University degree....needless to say he heeded his father's well founded advice and after climbing the ranks, his current specialty is hospital administration. My oldest step-daughter has a degree in Business Administration from the University of Florida and runs her own small business. My baby girl Kim is a sweet soul, active in LGBT activities. She has the love and support of the only father she has ever known. Well folks, all I can say is, it has certainly been a wild and very interesting ride since graduation in 1964. It hasn't all been a bed of roses, there have been times when I would have been happy to explode with angst and call an end to it all, count my chips and go home, but I assure you, being the child of Aries I am, I just laughed and charged straight ahead. My moto, regardless of the bullies who tormented me in High School because I was tall, nerdy, and skinny, wore glasses, and had big ears, and according to their standards, didn’t fit their mold, has always been: “Damn the torpedoes Gridley, full speed ahead!” It sure as hell has been an interesting life, and as Edith Piaf said, and as I echo now: “Non, je ne regrette rien.” ............”No, I regret nothing!”...............Well, an update on my US Army Major son. He recently called me and said he didn’t want me to be disappointed but: “IT’S A BOY!” I finally got a grandson! Poor kid, he will have his diapers changed by three older sisters and believe me they will not let him forget it, ever!
I have forgotten to share my extensive Blog on my favorite collecting hobby... the 18th-19th century Academic Nude. Here is the link in case anyone is interested (If you are intellectually challenged when it comes to the nude human form then don’t bother). Just Google Academic Nudes 19th Century.
During my University drawing classes after I retired I became interested in collecting fine examples of academic nude drawings from the golden age of the European Academy system (1840 to 1910). I later expanded my collecting hobby to include not only drawings but paintings, watercolors, intaglio prints, lithographs, and sculpture in all forms to include bronzes. Unfortunately in these educational times you cannot get the kind of disciplined high level sight-size training that artists in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th century received in a European Art Academy without enrolling in a specialized Atelier teaching classical methods of drawing and painting. While attending the University of Florida, I had the opportunity to attend an Atelier in Toronto, Canada which specializes in teaching 19th century painting and drawing techniques. Boy did that month open my eyes to how lacking in teaching classical techniques the University system is here in the US. I can remember a conversation during one painting class at UF when a frustrated 19 year old, who was struggling with technique and color, turned to me and said: “Welcome to the University of Florida teach yourself to draw and paint degree program.” Poor kid didn’t know how close to the mark he was! The Professors where basically teaching you to dig for it yourself, here’s the assignment... go to it suckers and thanks to Mom and Dad for the tuition! There have been some funny times during my art classes... during my first class in drawing the human form the Professor prepared us for our introduction to drawing the nude..... we were all standing there, each of us having obtained a certain level in drawing expertise with hours of drawing still life’s under our belts, easels set up, charcoal at the ready.... then the model came out, took off her robe and stood there in her birthday suit and suddenly not a single one of us could draw anything beyond a stick figure! Needless to say, we quickly learned to deal with the shock of having a male or female nude standing before us and carried on like it was nothing outside of normal. When I look at a 19th century Academic nude work with the intention of adding it to my collection the work has to be the very best example of 19th century Academy work I can afford. I recently spent four times what a print cost me to import from Germany to have it framed and matted to museum standards because of the striking and singular talents of the artist who produced it! Modernism is the bane of Art! By the 1930’s the traditional Academy of Art training had collapsed with the introduction of French Impressionism and later modernism finally killed it. I love Thomas Hart Benton’s quote when asked about the work of 20th century modernist artists such as Jackson Pollack: “Nobody ever taught those S.o.b’s how to draw!” Right on Tom, you got that right!
Now let me tell you about my very own Close Encounter of the First Kind. Not being one to voluntarily join the bandwagon of extraterrestrial UFO goofball sightings I do have some personal observations to relate of my own experience in the realm of the questionable.
I was watching a special on UFO’s several days ago and part of the television program featured the North Bergen sighting of George O’Barsky in 1975. Suddenly a light bulb went off and I began to put two and two together regarding an incident which my wife and I experienced in Wayne, New Jersey around the same time as the North Bergen incident. My personal experience that night has stayed so fresh in my mind, so much so that I can replay it as if it happened yesterday, even after all these years. After watching that TV episode, my curiosity got the best of me and I Googled ..”UFO sightings in New Jersey 1975” and the details of that siting appeared.
Let me review some background specific information about myself. I think you will agree that I am an exceptionally reliable and credible source with particular training in careful observation due to my chosen career. I graduated from University in March of 1972 and received an appointment to the FBI Academy in June 1972. After completing my 16 weeks of training, as a newly minted Special Agent, I was transferred to my first assignment and during early fall of 1974 I received new orders to the New York City division of the FBI. Since my wife and I had friends who lived in Wayne, NJ we decided to ...Expand for more
settle in that area and decided I would commute into NYC daily. We found an apartment in Cedar Grove and settled in.
After my commute home late one afternoon in Spring 1975, I asked my wife if she was up for a drive over to a Mall on Hamburg Turnpike in Wayne where there was an Arthur Treacher’s Fish & Chips. She agreed and we set out, making our way from Cedar Grove down Route 23 and finally over to Valley Road in Wayne. As we were about a quarter mile from the intersection of Hamburg Turnpike and Valley Road my wife looked over at me with a surprised look on her face pointing up to the right and says... “There’s a UFO.” Being a died in the wool skeptic at the time, at least until verifiable facts present themselves directly before my eyes, I laughed and said.... “Yeah, right!” She leaned forward and pointed up and slightly to the right, and said, “No, right there, see.” Deciding to humor her, I leaned forward and looked up to where she was pointing, and there, suspended slightly above the tree line was this classically shaped, windowless, silver metallic, dome topped disk, with lights rotating around the rim at the bottom of the disk. Needless to say, with those obvious facts before my very eyes in real time the consummate skeptic in me quickly became a true believer.
Being a competently trained investigator, I needed to take a closer look at this one-of-a-kind event and we drove almost directly under the disk (it made no discernible sound or disturbance as we passed beneath the object), then straight through the intersection of Valley Road and Hamburg Turnpike where I took the first left into a bank’s parking lot. I drove to the nearest vantage point to the object in the parking lot adjacent to Hamburg Turnpike where my wife and I exited the car and stood on a grass strip at the corner of the intersection with an unobstructed view of the object as it made a slow deliberate approach towards us, parallel to Valley Road. I must say, this was the first time in my life I have stood and observed something that left me speechless; speechless, but not devoid of the ability to make rational judgements about the nature of what I was observing.
As we stood there, I made some very careful mental observations about its shape, dimensions, and the slowly advancing flight path it made towards us. There was no panic on our part, just simple curiosity in our observations. The entire event took perhaps half an hour at most from first sighting until, quite frankly, we became bored with the entire episode after the object slowly moved behind some buildings, and went on our way to the restaurant with, not surprisingly, a new attitude towards UFO sightings and what lies beyond our little pathetic shell here on Earth. Let me say this, the object moved slowly and deliberately as if it was merely making normal anthropological research observations of a newly discovered species, and apparently the occupants did not give a royal hoot who saw their hovering craft. There were no fancy gyrations or blindingly fast departures, no electrical disturbances, no static discharges, no blinding bright lights, no strange sounds, no little green men peering from windows, just a gravity defying, hovering, metallic, slowly moving, classically shaped UFO disk in plain unobstructed daylight.
I estimated the object to be approximately 30 feet in diameter and perhaps half that in height from base to the top of the dome, with a classic slightly elongated UFO saucer shape. During my observation the object remained at just above tree top level and during the end of the observation it was suspended above the northern edge of the parking lot of a shopping mall opposite the Wayne Village Apartments. The time of day was late afternoon, with excellent visibility, and the observation ended just before darkness fell. There were no observable windows or exterior markings, no radical movements, no protrusions of any kind from the body of the craft, no little men waving from windows, and absolutely no sounds I could discern associated with the object. There were a series of colored neon like lights which traveled randomly around the very outermost circumference of the base of the disk which appeared to be integrated into the structure rather than attached to it in any observable fashion. The lights would meet at random places on the disk, split apart, and reverse directions only to return from opposite directions and meet at another random spot, again splitting apart, repeating the cycle. Being a consummate plane spotter and having taken private pilot flight lessons, I knew this was not any terrestrial craft I was familiar with, and at one point I recall a TWA Boeing 727 flew directly over the object on its approach to a landing at Newark Airport. I could easily see the TWA logo illuminated on the tail of the aircraft. Once the object got even with Lancaster Court it paused, made a turn, and proceeded down Lancaster Court where it finally disappeared from sight. My last recollection of the object was a backlit side view illuminated by the setting sun and the object was at or slightly above the the level of the two story apartment buildings proceeding on a casual level course. I recall thinking anyone who happened to be gazing out those second story apartment windows certainly would have been in for a real treat. By this time our evening meal of Fish & Chips was long overdue. I looked at my wife and with a somewhat tongue-in-cheek bit of humor I said: “Well, that settles that argument!” We both laughed. I quickly realized that the moral of this story was simple; we are definitely not alone in this universe and to think otherwise is to play the fool. The implications of that incident on my personal philosophical outlook that evening were earth shaking. Never again would I scoff at credible UFO sightings. Never again would I fall victim to the superstitions of human kind associated with the idea that we are alone in this universe.
Needless to say, that early in my government career was not the most opportune time to be mouthing off about extraterrestrial visitations and UFO’s so we both kept quiet about it and stored the incident away for some future occasion when the constraints of career and responsibility had been lifted. Is it not strange how years and years later, some random action today will bring back to vivid, perfect memory, something you have casually consigned to your own personal history, never to be shared? Now that I am retired, I have no fear of repercussions or ridicule, and can share this really personal, singular, and amazing observation. It certainly has amended my perspective about extraterrestrial visitations and whether or not we are alone in the Universe. Someone once said about UFO’s that “absence of proof is not proof of absence” and when I hear so called experts and amateur skeptics deny the existence of extraterrestrial visitors and consequently belittle the UFO observer, trying desperately to explain it away as something natural or tricks of the human mind, I have to smerk at their folly and recall my own first skeptic’s remark to my wife when the unthinkable occurred late one afternoon in 1975 in a northern New Jersey town: ................”Yeah, Right!" I subsequently realized just how much human beings love their little closed minded, self absorbed world. Take it from a once confirmed skeptic, I know exactly what I saw and no amount of ridicule, no amount of snide comments will change the reality of that very careful scientific observation we made that afternoon in broad daylight . Naturally that experience in 1975 was not on my “bucket list” but it has now been marked off as..................“Been there, Seen that, Believe it.”
I have posted a sketch of the craft we saw that night in the photo gallery. I have also posted two newspaper articles of UFO observations which occurred around the same time. Apparently our encounter was not a singular occurrence in that time period.
By the way, that "now" photo above is my Grandpa, Bill Atwell. He was the most unflappable, kindest, honest human being ever to embrace my life. He was my hero. I would spend the summers with my Grandparents and there were many a morning he would wrap me up in my blanket, set me up in the passenger seat of his 1949 Chevrolet pickup, and cart me off to some lake, river, or pond somewhere where we would spend the day bass fishing. He was the kindest, most beautiful man ever created and I miss him!
News Flash: My US Army Captain is now a US Army Major! Congratulations to him on his promotion! With his promotion also came a transfer from San Antonio to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas where he has been accepted into a US Army Command and General Staff College! Out of 400 applicants in the US Army he was chosen and a few days ago he received a call from the US Surgeon General’s Office congratulating him on being only the 27th Medical Corps soldier to have been chosen, the Surgeon General himself being one of those 27! My oldest son is now working for a Major Canadian company here in the US! Congratulations guys, job well done! Ad Astra!
UP Date: 7/23. My US Army Major has just received his Master of Operational Studies Degree from the US Army Command and General Staff College! He has been accepted for another semester at the College for an additional training! Time in Grade and his next promotion is Lt. Colonel! So proud of that kid! My Oldest son now works for a Canadian company and does speaking tours in the southeast US. Up date: (May 13, 2024) As I noted above, my youngest son his family are now headed to North Carolina and a new duty station! Closer to home more than ever!
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