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June 24, 1997 East Oregonian
Reprinted from the June 24, 1987 EO
Stories of UFOs started in Pendleton 40 years ago
Editors Note: Near the 40th anniversary of the Kenneth Arnold sighting, shortly before Bill Schuening died, he sought out a reporter to tell again his recollection of seeing a flying saucer the same day.
By HAL McCUNE
of the East Oregonian
PENDLETON – Bill Schuening figured the humming noise was a tractor. But instead, when his pickup rumbled over the rise and he looked across the field some 200 or 300 feet away, he saw a saucer-like object suspended five or six feet off the ground. "I would have given anything to have had a camera with me," he says. But his memory of that moment 40 years ago today is as sharp as a photograph. Schuening, now 70, saw a flying saucer. To him, it's not a question of whether or not he thinks he saw it. He saw it! "It was definitely there," hovering above the rolling farmland some 25 miles north of Pendleton, he says.
No one had heard the term UFO at the time – there had been no cause to coin it. Schuening helped usher in the era of unidentified flying objects. But it was an airplane pilot from Boise who drew the headlines.
Kenneth Arnold landed his plane in Pendleton on June 24, 1947, and told East Oregonian reporter Bill Bequette he'd just seen nine shiny, flat objects streaking across the sky at incredible speed. The story was spread nationwide by the wire services and Arnold was marked the rest of his life as the man who started the UFO craze. He died in 1984. Schuening says he saw a flying saucer the same day as Arnold did. But he didn't tell anyone until after Arnold's story was published in the EO.
"My boss told me about a flying saucer story and I told him I saw it too," Schuening says. Lester King, for whom Schuening was ranch foreman for 17 years, convinced him to go to town and tell others what he'd seen.Arnold said he saw nine flying objects traveling in formation across Eastern Washington, weaving over the Cascade Mountains at speeds he clocked at up to 1,200 mph. He spotted the objects about 30 miles west of Mount Rainier and clocked them to Mount Adams.
"It seemed impossible," he told the reporter, but added, "I must believe my eyes."
Schuening's description was similar, although he says the shiny silver objects were perfectly spherical, while Arnold reported the objects as more crescent-shaped. Another area sighting was reported the following Sunday by Mrs. Morton Elder, a McKay Creek farm wife, who said she'd seen seven "perfectly round, umbrella-like" objects flying north of her farm.
The EO ran a lengthy front-page story on June 26, 1947, regarding Arnold's unusual observation. A much shorter story ran on Page One four days later that quoted Schuening saying he'd seen "flying discs" the same day as Arnold and mentioning Elder's sighting.
But Schuening was the only one of the three "witnesses" to claim he saw more than just a flying saucer.
"There were two little guys in green suits with white helmets standing right underneath it. They were no bigger than this," he recalled earlier this month, holding his hand at waist level.
"It didn't scare me at all," Schuening says. He was too amazed to be frightened.
Schuening says he watched the helmeted creatures for a few seconds and then "they were gone. How they got in (the craft) I'll never know. Suddenly they were just gone."
Moments later the craft zipped away toward the river, made a big circle, and headed over the mountains. "The last I saw, the sun was shining on it."
The craft was "silver, all top and bottom," with no seams or doors, Schuening says. He figures he watched it for nearly a minute.
He tried to return this month to the site where he says he saw the saucer, but "there's no way to get to it now. All the roads have been plowed." But he's confident he could recognize the spot.
Arnold was so captivated by his experience 40 years ago that he ended up publishing a book years later titled "The Coming of the Saucers." He was the keynote speaker at a meeting of the UFO Congress in 1977 in Chicago.
For Schuening, life went on just as it had before the memorable day. "I didn't pay much attention to it after that. Harvest was coming up. I was too busy." But he has read about a lot of UFO sightings over the years. And he admits he still is puzzled by what he saw on a warm June evening four decades ago. "I can't understand it myself," he says. But he's certain he saw it.