by Anthony Bragalia

For years embalmer Glenn Dennis has told an intriguing Roswell crash
tale. If true, it leaves no doubt that what fell to Earth in July of
1947 in New Mexico sands was from another world. However Glenn's story
has been disputed by researchers as having serious difficulties. Today,
some have all but dismissed his purported involvement in the crash
events.
But new interviews and information show that the undertaker's amazing
story may well have basis in fact. And a fresh look may have uncovered
the possible identity of the "missing nurse" at the Roswell base who
decades ago revealed to Glenn the alien reality of the crash.

GLENN'S STORY
Glenn Dennis could only happen in a place like New Mexico. His top shirt
button always clasped, he often wore a bolero. His frame was lanky but
always upright- standing at least two feet taller than desert brush. A
marvel of shortened hyperbole, tongue-in-cheek cusses and flirtations-
this is how family remembers Glenn.
Glenn Dennis is now on the far side of 85
and a shell of his former self. He is reported to be in gravely ill
health. But in July of 1947, he was an energetic young man busily
employed as a Mortuary Assistant for the Ballard Funeral Home in
Roswell, NM. Ballard's had a long-standing contract with the Roswell
military base to provide ambulance and mortuary services.

Dennis signed an affidavit two decades ago that outlined some very
unusual events that he had experienced that Summer of 1947. He
maintained that he had received a strange call while at Ballard's from
an officer at the Roswell base a short time after the Roswell crash. The
officer was inquiring about the availability of hermetically-sealed baby
caskets. Glenn was also questioned about body preservation methods.
Dennis replied that he could provide the caskets- and that the best way
to preserve the corpses would be to have them frozen. The officer also
wanted to know about tissue and blood changes that might occur if bodies
were out in the open, exposed to the elements. Curious about the odd
call, Dennis asked the officer if something had happened at the base. He
was told that the information was simply for "future reference."

Soon after, Dennis was summoned to the base to pick up an injured
airman. He says that on his return, he viewed what appeared to be some
very strange debris from some sort of wreckage. He saw the debris in the
backs of base vehicles as he slowly and deliberately passed through a
ramp exit. One of the debris pieces was "canoe shaped" and about three
feet long. It appeared to have odd colored hues like burnt steel, but it
was not steel. It had inscribed on it 3"-4" high "hieroglyphics" that
ran in a pattern along the contour of the wreckage piece.

Glenn was spotted observing the material by an officer, who then stopped
Glenn and loudly rebuked him. He demanded to know of Glenn who he was,
why he was there and what else he may have seen. He told Dennis to say
nothing of what he may have witnessed. Glenn told the officer to "Go to
Hell." He was a civilian who would not be talked to in that manner. The
officer then threatened "Don't kid yourself, they'll be picking your
bones out of the sand!"
Glenn explains that Roswell's Sheriff George Wilcox made a visit to
Glenn's father's house a couple of days later. Wilcox (a friend of
Glenn's father) warned the elder Dennis to let Glenn know that he had
better keep quiet about anything he may have known or seen at the base
that day.

GLENN'S CONTROVERSY
The part of Glenn's story that is the most controversial-
Dennis states that while Sheriff Wilcox was at his father's, Glenn was
actually returning to the base to see a nurse friend. He wanted to know
if she had heard anything about all of this. They discussed what she
knew over Cokes at a base dining area.
She told Glenn that she had earlier witnessed a horrific site. A doctor
had pulled her into a room for assistance where there she had viewed
three strange "foreign bodies'" that were being examined. She nauseated
from the wretching stench. She described to Glenn a classic alien
humanoid form, which she had drawn on a napkin for Glenn.

The creature had an enlarged head, slit-like mouth with vestigial nose
and ears, unusual eyes and enlongated arms. Hysterical in the
re-telling, the nurse then admonished Dennis to leave the base
immediately. That is the last Dennis ever saw of her.
In the 1990s holes began to emerge in Glenn's story. Glenn had given
researchers the name of the Roswell base nurse as "Naomi Self" - which
later proved to be a phony name. He also told conflicting stories about
what had become of the nurse. He said that she had died in a plane
crash, that she went to England and even that she joined a convent.
There are other problems with Glenn's story. He mentioned a doctor who
he said was involved, but who was later proven could not have been. It
is rumored that Glenn may have asked for compensation for later
interviews. And Glenn helped to establish the Roswell UFO museum, which
became a source of (modest) personal income for a brief period of time.

SUPPORT FOR GLENN
Despite all of this, there are several reasons why Glenn's tale should
not be dismissed-

1) Supporting Glenns' story is the fact that he never sought to tell it.
He was found. Researcher Stan Friedman first interviewed Glenn on August
5, 1989. Friedman found Glenn because Friedman had reasoned that the
Roswell undertaker may have heard something about the incident. Only
later did Dennis become public on the matter.

2) The former Chief of Police for Roswell, L. M. Hall, signed an
affidavit in which he recalls that -just a few days after the July 1947
crash- Dennis had recounted to him the odd call from the base about the
availability of child caskets.

3) A Roswell base medical technician in 1947, David Wagnon, signed an
affidavit that he remembers the nurse as described by Dennis

4) Glenn's grandson, Kelly Abbott, states on a family history website
that Glenn told his Roswell story to his close family in the 1980s. This
was after the first Roswell book was published in 1980, but before "all
of the books and movies" had come out in the 1990s about the incident.
He says "Papa told the story with the sense that it was about time
someone knew what happened. This is before he had spoken publicly."

5) Glenn's high school classmate was Rogene Cordes. I recently found and
contacted Rogene. She is the widow of an Air Force General and believes
Glenn implicitly. She was also a neighbor of Roswell Sheriff George
Wilcox. Mrs. Cordes says that she knows that Glenn is telling the truth.
She is cautious in relating her knowledge, but she indicates that there
are things about Glenn's story that she knows happened at the time,
including the involvement of Sheriff Wilcox and the call to Glenn about
ice for bodies. Rogene mentions that she could not find any ice or dry
ice anywhere that crash weekend. Not at Clardy's dairy nor at the train
depot, which stored and sold dry ice. Glenn had told the base officer
that the best way to preserve corpses was to freeze them. The military
had found their ice.

6) A Roswell Army Air Field serviceman in 1947, Sgt. Milton Sprouse (who
spent ten years in the military) remembers distinctly Glenn speaking of
the event decades ago. Sprouse says that a few years after the crash he
had seen Glenn at a mutual friend's funeral. Glenn brought up in
conversation the base's strange call inquiring about the child caskets.

7) Glenn's close friend was Mollie Abramitis. Mollie recently related to
me an extraordinary story. She was visiting New Mexico from her home in
California in April of 1989. Glenn was managing the Wortley Hotel at the
time. Glenn invited her and others for dinner. He then told a small
group of close friends gathered at the hotel's dining room that he had
an important story to tell them. It had been troubling him for a very
long time. He felt compelled and ready to share it with them. He said
that he was worried that the story had "gotten out" and he was concerned
about approaches for interviews about the subject. He told Mollie and
the others assembled at the Wortley the precise ET story that he told
publicly much later. Mollie said that Glenn appeared genuinely
concerned, even frightened. An ex-police officer at the table beseeched
Glenn that he must speak out publicly and tell all that he knows, that
it would be the best form of "personal protection." Glenn rarely drank.
But this time, Mollie says, after he had told his astonishing story,
Glenn partook of some liquid courage.

8) Glenn's fraternal twin Bob Dennis (now deceased) was alway reluctant
to discuss his brother's story. John Price was Bob Dennis' close friend.
Bob explained to John that he was overseas in the military when the
Roswell crash had happened. But his father told him about it when he
returned from the service. Bob said that his father was very good
friends with Sheriff Wilcox. He said that Wilcox and his Deputy (Tommy
Thompson) did in fact come to the house and warned their father to make
sure that Glenn says nothing of the event. It is likely that Glenn's
father was told much more about the crash event by his Sheriff friend.
This is because Bob Dennis said that his father made him promise to
never reveal any details about the event. Bob kept that promise to his
death, always saying the it was Glenn's story to tell.

9) The 1947 Roswell Fire Chief's son was identified and contacted by me
recently. Rue was living in the Roswell area at the time of the crash
and knew Dennis, as did his father. He stated sparingly, and not wishing
to elaborate,
that "everything that Glenn says happened."

GLENN'S MISSING NURSE - FOUND?
Glenn's "nurse friend" has never been conclusively identified. Glenn did
not provide researchers with her real name, if she existed. But then
again...she just may have. Reexamination of old documents -and the
confessions of a Roswell family- reveal that there are two very likely
candidates:
Eileen (Adeline) Fanton was a 1st Lieutenant that was very briefly
attached to the Roswell Army Airfield Station Hospital as a General
Nurse- from December 26, 1946 until September 4, 1947:
adeline.jpg
· According to military records Lt. Eileen Fanton (single) was 5'l"
and 100 pounds, with dark hair and eyes and of Italian descent. Dennis
described the nurse that he had known as "small like Audrey Hepburn,
with short black hair, dark eyes and olive skin." · Fanton was a
graduate of a Catholic academy and Catholic nursing school. Glenn said
that his nurse was "raised as a strict Catholic."

· Fanton is confirmed to have later served a tour duty in England.
Dennis had mentioned England as (one of) the places he thought that the
nurse may have relocated. · Fanton was educated by nuns. Dennis has
offered an alternate story that he had heard that the nurse had later
become a nun. Fanton left the Roswell base weeks after her meeting with
Glenn. She was admitted to a hospital for a reputed "D&C" abortion
procedure. She retired from military service in 1955 and was never
located to be questioned. She is believed deceased.

Ms. Miriam Bush:
In July of 1947 Miriam Bush was a single 27 year old woman who
(according to records and family) was employed by the Roswell base.
Though not a "nurse"- she was a medical secretary in base hospital
services. · Like the "nurse" that Glenn described, Miriam was
smallish and attractive, with black, short-cut hair and dark eyes.

· Glenn had offered the faked name of "Naomi Self" as the identity
of his missing nurse. "Miriam" may well be an anagram of sorts for
"Naomi." Both "Miriam" and "Naomi" have the same length of letters, as
do the last names "Bush" and "Self." · Amazingly (according to her
brother George, her sister Jean and her sister-in-law Patricia) Miriam
would arrive at her parents home one day after work in the Summer of
1947. She was tearful and in shock. She had described to her family a
horrible event that had occured earlier that day. She was pulled into a
base hospital room by a doctor who wanted her to be aware of something.
She sickened as her eyes cast upon "little bodies" on gurneys in the
middle of the room. These bodies were childlike but they were not
children. They were strange- with massive heads and eyes that were not
at all right. She told her family that she begged God to let her forget
the sight. · Traumatized, Miriam would flee New Mexico shortly
thereafter and go to California where she remained for years without
communicating with those back home. Alcoholic, Miriam would commit
suicide at very end of 1989. 1989 is the very year that Glenn "went
public" with his Roswell story.

GLENN'S TRUTH
Glenn has mixed misdirection with truth. He used storytelling devices to
hide or obfuscate identities. His concern for protecting privacy was in
conflict with his desire to get out the story. He saw others making
money on the story and -ever the businessman- thought he'd profit some
as well. He may have injected some imagination into history to awaken
interest. Perhaps he did it to supplement a story where the real facts
could not be obtained.
It could even be that Glenn was himself not the "involved" one, but was
covering for another. Or it may be that his father had confided to Glenn
the story that he had learned from friend Sheriff George Wilcox. It must
also be remembered that flirtatious Glenn was a newlywed with an
expectant and homebound wife at the time of the Roswell crash. His
"relationship" with the nurse may have been more than casual- another
possible reason for his evasiveness.
Whatever the case, there can be no doubt that there is a true -but
hidden- "core story" somewhere to be found within Glenn's fascinating
tale.

Perhaps Kelly Abbott, Glenn's grandson, sums the Roswell undertaker's
tale best: "While it's true that his heart may have always been in the
right place, his brain often got him in trouble. To many who've lived
their lives and will die in Roswell, Glenn was their undertaker. Trust
in him is a given. To those of us who know him better, the truth of the
matter is far more complicated."