Back to Rose Hackett

Like many of the women in this story, not much is known about Rose Hackett. In some ways, the first NICAP office manager was a woman ahead of her time.  As a 1957 membership list shows, though  married to Duncan Cameron Campbell, she used Hackett as her professional name.

Linda recalls that she was multilingual. And NICAP-related correspondence from that time paints her as highly capable but, alas for the desired organizational image, an enthusiastic recruiter of contactees. And contactees were thought of as the very last type of people NICAP wanted to trot out  before Congress in their attempt to break the Air Force's dog-in-the manger with-all the tasty data attitude.

I do know that Rose continued to send Townsend copies of incoming UFO reports long after he was (in popular belief) "fired" from his job. Linda, at age 12 or so, was given stacks of them to sort, and told to pick out those that wobbled, for "those are ours."

I also know that Rose corresponded with Gray Barker, and, possibly at Townsend's request, sent him a thick (and interesting) packet of information regarding Townsend's work (now archived at the Qualight site.) The last I saw of  Rose was in a letter from Townsend, congratulating her and "Lee" (whoever that was) on their retirement move to Prescott, Arizona.

I hope you lived long and prospered in that beautiful place, Rose.

Is it worth noting that Bill Moore (Not Townsend's attorney,  Bill Moore, but the the PX Bill Moore) operated his press out of Prescott? Probably not. But just in case and for the record:

At one time, Bill Moore, the Philadelphia Experiment author, operated his publishing house out of Prescott, Arizona. And that fact may or may not be relevant to a phrase found in a 1953 letter from Townsend to Josephine.

In keeping with his habit of referring to people by an informal code, based on where they were located, he told her that he was sceduled to meet with "Prescott and Williams", and that he expected this would be his hardest test yet. Once upon a time I thought this mention bore some relationship to the Bill Uhouse story of aliens demanding to work with only one scientist, but I am now (or at least, currently) skeptical of that idea, and looking for more grounded theories.