He carried the baton Forteana.
Donald Dumont Whitacre was born 29 June 1920 in Ohio, making him among the youngest of the early Forteans. (Fort’s first book was published in late 1919; Whitacre was not quite 12 when Fort died.) His father, Frank, was a carpenter. His mother was the former Helen Runyan. I cannot find the family in the 1930 census, but they are in the 1940 one, apparently having weathered the Depression well. They owned a $1,500 home. Donald was the only child. Nannie Runyan—Helen’s mother—also lived with them then. The census was taken 15 April 1940 and Donald was listed as single, but he was probably already engaged by then, to Charlene Sherman, some two years his junior.
In August 1941, Donald and Charlene had their first child, a son, Roger Lynn. A second son, Gordon, followed not long after. I cannot find a draft card for Donald, though he would have been prime age for World War II. Presumably, he did not serve. Notes in the Ohio press have him living a conventional life, with frequent dinners hosted for his parents and in-laws. Donald was associated with the Ohio State Archeological and Historical Society and was also a writer for newspapers and magazines. He credited two men with helping him to launch his writing career. One was the naturalist Frank O. Hazard and the other was the novelist Louis Bromfield. According to reports, his writings and columns appeared in Country Magazine, Ohio Magazine, as well as other national publications, but I have not been able to find them.
Donald Dumont Whitacre was born 29 June 1920 in Ohio, making him among the youngest of the early Forteans. (Fort’s first book was published in late 1919; Whitacre was not quite 12 when Fort died.) His father, Frank, was a carpenter. His mother was the former Helen Runyan. I cannot find the family in the 1930 census, but they are in the 1940 one, apparently having weathered the Depression well. They owned a $1,500 home. Donald was the only child. Nannie Runyan—Helen’s mother—also lived with them then. The census was taken 15 April 1940 and Donald was listed as single, but he was probably already engaged by then, to Charlene Sherman, some two years his junior.
In August 1941, Donald and Charlene had their first child, a son, Roger Lynn. A second son, Gordon, followed not long after. I cannot find a draft card for Donald, though he would have been prime age for World War II. Presumably, he did not serve. Notes in the Ohio press have him living a conventional life, with frequent dinners hosted for his parents and in-laws. Donald was associated with the Ohio State Archeological and Historical Society and was also a writer for newspapers and magazines. He credited two men with helping him to launch his writing career. One was the naturalist Frank O. Hazard and the other was the novelist Louis Bromfield. According to reports, his writings and columns appeared in Country Magazine, Ohio Magazine, as well as other national publications, but I have not been able to find them.
Whitacre was best known for his series “Curious Facts about Ohio and Ohioans.” I have seen none of these—they appeared in scattered publications—but my sense is that they owed more to Ripley than Fort. They focused a lot on animal life—that was the influence of Hazard—and seemingly unbelievable facts. (Like: there used to be bison in Ohio.) These led to (and perhaps were included in) his 1947 book, “Curious Facts about Ohio.” I have not seen this, either, but it may have owed more to Fort: one review described it as containing “strange stories that have happened in, above or below Ohio.” Apparently, a lot of the material was culled from his research on Ohio history.
I don’t have much sense of Whitacre's life from the 1950s on. He appeared in a few news reports for everyday happenings, but otherwise events seem to have been of the quotidian kind. In 1980, he published his second book, “Ohio Firsts.” I haven’t seen it, but the book seems explained well enough by the title. He apparently continued to do some of his research on curious facts, because the book was published by Curious Facts Features—which seems to have been just another name for his home. And in 1982 he trademarked “Curious Facts” for his “newspaper column of oddities.” All of this was done when he was living in Lebanon, Ohio. Apparently later in the decade, Whitacre applied to social security for disability—it was denied—and entered a long-term-care facility.
He died 31 October 1987, aged 67.
***************
Although it is not known exactly when or how Donald Whitacre came across Fort and Forteanism, it is tempting to speculate that it was after he started collecting his curious facts. The reasons to suspect this are three-fold: first, he didn’t appear in Doubt until his book was published, suggesting that he may have come across Fort during his research, and seen the Society as a market for his writings. Second, in the one example I have of him writing about Fort, he concentrated on Fort’s flying saucer theorizing. And third, newspapers do not mention Fort as an inspiration, opting instead for Hazard and Bromfield. (On a similar note, in the one example I have of his curious facts, Whitacre mentions his friend Robert L. Ripley, suggesting a different line of influence.)
Whatever the case, Whitacre appeared in Doubt seven times after the publication of his book, from 1948 to 1955. In addition, he wrote a letter to a local newspaper on Fort and the flying saucers—in 1950—that further gives evidence of his Forteanism, as well a content to it: there were many Forteans, and many different kinds of Forteanism. Speaking generally, Whitacre seemed fascinated by flying saucers and other anomalies, including, in one case, a heretical scientific position. It does not seem, though, that he was intent to disprove science or play with the meanings and practices of science, but saw Fort as a source of scientific information. Nor does he seem to have been religiously heretical, suggesting that Ohio—which did not have a state motto—adopt as its own the phrase Omnium cum Deo, which he glossed as “Everything With God’s Help.”
The first mention of Whitacre in Doubt came with issue 21, June 1948. Thayer praised Whitacre’s book, and the Society sold it (for one dollar). “A 15-page booklet--full of Forteana--has been compiled by MFS Whitacre under the title, “Little Known Facts about Ohio.” Thayer wished that 47 other members would “do as much for their respective states.” (He was allays hoping to organize the Fortean data in which he so often drowned.) There was then a silence of more than two years, until Whitacre received a generic credit for sending in something about flying saucers in Doubt 30, from October 1950. Three others of his credits were also fairly generic, untethered to any particular clipping: Doubt 32 (March 1951), in which he had provided some kind of information on a mysterious explosion; and Doubts 38 and 39 (October 1952 and January 1953).
The other two contributions were more specific. In Doubt 31 (January 1951)—his third appearance in the magazine—he was credited with sending in an Associated Press story about John Cage, a man from New Jersey—no title or office was given—who thought that geologists had it backwards: slips in the earth (the movement of faults) did not cause earthquakes; rather, earthquakes caused the slips. Whence earthquakes? Movements in the ether, he said, coupling renegade geology with past-its-prime physics. (Thayer had a notion that the earth was growing and changing shape, from sphere to cube and back again, and he may have seen this clipping as some kind of support.) In the other case—Doubt 48, April 1955—Whitacre sent in material about a mysterious fire in the Santa Catalina mountains of Arizona.
According to Thayer’s digest of the material, the fire started the evening of 7 February 1955. It burned for more than eleven hours, with flames to fifty feet high, visible all the way to Tucson. The fire had hopscotched from one area to another. Rocks were burned fifteen feet above the ground,w with no sign of fire in between. One article reported that it was “something out of science fiction.” What Thayer did not report was that a prospector claimed to have started the fire accidentally. And that there were strong suggestions—even if they were negative—that flying saucers were somehow involved: the air force investigated, police wondered how the fire burnt three inches below the rocky soil, and one article explicitly stated the fire was not caused by something from outer space.
Likely, it was this angle—the crafts from space suggestions—that attracted Whitacre’s attention. He sent material to the Fortean Society about flying saucers—which appeared in October 1950. And in November 1950 had published in the Wilmington (Ohio) “News-Journal” a letter to the editor that linked Charles Fort and the flying saucers that had intrigued a nation for the previous three years. He wrote,
“According to the late Charles Fort ‘one measures a circle beginning anywhere’, and it is that quotation I think more than any other he ever uttered that gives you the insight to his vast knowledge of what this country, and the rest of the world, has experienced in the way of unknown ‘fliers’ in the skies.
“I am not fronting for Henry Holt & Company or for Frank Scully, but in my estimation one of the greatest works ever to hit the press is Scully’s new book, “Behind the Flying Saucers.” Although he leaves final judgment of just what the flying saucers really are up to each reader, he does give the facts as he has found them.
“As a long-time member of the Fortean Society, it was with great pride that I read the chapter in this book telling about Charles Fort as the real pioneer of collecting data concerning flying objects in the sky and, believe it or not [Ed: !!], these date back hundreds of years, not just since 1947 when the new saucer scare hit this country. Here is the first paragraph of Scully’s chapter on Fort: ‘All through the saucepan sky-writings the Forteans must have sat around in their seminars grinning like contented cats. Thanks to the painstaking researchers of their dead master, they could claim they foresaw Project Saucer and the reign of error.’ Not terror, but error.
“I can truly say that I was one of those that sat around grinning, because as far back as 1943 I wrote about the findings of the so-called flying saucers in my newspaper column, Curious Facts. That was four years before the newest saucer craze hit.
“And speaking about Clinton County, where this newspaper is read, on page 10 of my book, Little Known Facts About Ohio, you will find a very strange happening in the skies over Martinsville. This data was actually some more of the pioneering Charles Fort.
“What this letter is getting around to is this, according to Scully there have been three so-called flying saucers that have been dismantled and carted to a flying field for investigation. And that field is only a little over thirty miles from Wilmington, Ohio. It is over at the Air Material Command at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio. Have you heard any word concerning these ‘ships’? Neither have I.
“If there is anyone reading this letter who has not been able to get a copy of Scully’s Behind The Flying Saucers and you wish a copy, get in touch with me and I’ll see that you get your copy. It’s worth reading and worth thinking about.
“I would like to thank the editor for printing this letter.”
Whitacre’ championing of Ohio as the center of the flying saucer world is not surprising. Ohio was on his mind! What stands out, though, is the casual conspiracy-mongering. Whitacre showed something of the paranoia buried even in the most conventional heart of America.
I don’t have much sense of Whitacre's life from the 1950s on. He appeared in a few news reports for everyday happenings, but otherwise events seem to have been of the quotidian kind. In 1980, he published his second book, “Ohio Firsts.” I haven’t seen it, but the book seems explained well enough by the title. He apparently continued to do some of his research on curious facts, because the book was published by Curious Facts Features—which seems to have been just another name for his home. And in 1982 he trademarked “Curious Facts” for his “newspaper column of oddities.” All of this was done when he was living in Lebanon, Ohio. Apparently later in the decade, Whitacre applied to social security for disability—it was denied—and entered a long-term-care facility.
He died 31 October 1987, aged 67.
***************
Although it is not known exactly when or how Donald Whitacre came across Fort and Forteanism, it is tempting to speculate that it was after he started collecting his curious facts. The reasons to suspect this are three-fold: first, he didn’t appear in Doubt until his book was published, suggesting that he may have come across Fort during his research, and seen the Society as a market for his writings. Second, in the one example I have of him writing about Fort, he concentrated on Fort’s flying saucer theorizing. And third, newspapers do not mention Fort as an inspiration, opting instead for Hazard and Bromfield. (On a similar note, in the one example I have of his curious facts, Whitacre mentions his friend Robert L. Ripley, suggesting a different line of influence.)
Whatever the case, Whitacre appeared in Doubt seven times after the publication of his book, from 1948 to 1955. In addition, he wrote a letter to a local newspaper on Fort and the flying saucers—in 1950—that further gives evidence of his Forteanism, as well a content to it: there were many Forteans, and many different kinds of Forteanism. Speaking generally, Whitacre seemed fascinated by flying saucers and other anomalies, including, in one case, a heretical scientific position. It does not seem, though, that he was intent to disprove science or play with the meanings and practices of science, but saw Fort as a source of scientific information. Nor does he seem to have been religiously heretical, suggesting that Ohio—which did not have a state motto—adopt as its own the phrase Omnium cum Deo, which he glossed as “Everything With God’s Help.”
The first mention of Whitacre in Doubt came with issue 21, June 1948. Thayer praised Whitacre’s book, and the Society sold it (for one dollar). “A 15-page booklet--full of Forteana--has been compiled by MFS Whitacre under the title, “Little Known Facts about Ohio.” Thayer wished that 47 other members would “do as much for their respective states.” (He was allays hoping to organize the Fortean data in which he so often drowned.) There was then a silence of more than two years, until Whitacre received a generic credit for sending in something about flying saucers in Doubt 30, from October 1950. Three others of his credits were also fairly generic, untethered to any particular clipping: Doubt 32 (March 1951), in which he had provided some kind of information on a mysterious explosion; and Doubts 38 and 39 (October 1952 and January 1953).
The other two contributions were more specific. In Doubt 31 (January 1951)—his third appearance in the magazine—he was credited with sending in an Associated Press story about John Cage, a man from New Jersey—no title or office was given—who thought that geologists had it backwards: slips in the earth (the movement of faults) did not cause earthquakes; rather, earthquakes caused the slips. Whence earthquakes? Movements in the ether, he said, coupling renegade geology with past-its-prime physics. (Thayer had a notion that the earth was growing and changing shape, from sphere to cube and back again, and he may have seen this clipping as some kind of support.) In the other case—Doubt 48, April 1955—Whitacre sent in material about a mysterious fire in the Santa Catalina mountains of Arizona.
According to Thayer’s digest of the material, the fire started the evening of 7 February 1955. It burned for more than eleven hours, with flames to fifty feet high, visible all the way to Tucson. The fire had hopscotched from one area to another. Rocks were burned fifteen feet above the ground,w with no sign of fire in between. One article reported that it was “something out of science fiction.” What Thayer did not report was that a prospector claimed to have started the fire accidentally. And that there were strong suggestions—even if they were negative—that flying saucers were somehow involved: the air force investigated, police wondered how the fire burnt three inches below the rocky soil, and one article explicitly stated the fire was not caused by something from outer space.
Likely, it was this angle—the crafts from space suggestions—that attracted Whitacre’s attention. He sent material to the Fortean Society about flying saucers—which appeared in October 1950. And in November 1950 had published in the Wilmington (Ohio) “News-Journal” a letter to the editor that linked Charles Fort and the flying saucers that had intrigued a nation for the previous three years. He wrote,
“According to the late Charles Fort ‘one measures a circle beginning anywhere’, and it is that quotation I think more than any other he ever uttered that gives you the insight to his vast knowledge of what this country, and the rest of the world, has experienced in the way of unknown ‘fliers’ in the skies.
“I am not fronting for Henry Holt & Company or for Frank Scully, but in my estimation one of the greatest works ever to hit the press is Scully’s new book, “Behind the Flying Saucers.” Although he leaves final judgment of just what the flying saucers really are up to each reader, he does give the facts as he has found them.
“As a long-time member of the Fortean Society, it was with great pride that I read the chapter in this book telling about Charles Fort as the real pioneer of collecting data concerning flying objects in the sky and, believe it or not [Ed: !!], these date back hundreds of years, not just since 1947 when the new saucer scare hit this country. Here is the first paragraph of Scully’s chapter on Fort: ‘All through the saucepan sky-writings the Forteans must have sat around in their seminars grinning like contented cats. Thanks to the painstaking researchers of their dead master, they could claim they foresaw Project Saucer and the reign of error.’ Not terror, but error.
“I can truly say that I was one of those that sat around grinning, because as far back as 1943 I wrote about the findings of the so-called flying saucers in my newspaper column, Curious Facts. That was four years before the newest saucer craze hit.
“And speaking about Clinton County, where this newspaper is read, on page 10 of my book, Little Known Facts About Ohio, you will find a very strange happening in the skies over Martinsville. This data was actually some more of the pioneering Charles Fort.
“What this letter is getting around to is this, according to Scully there have been three so-called flying saucers that have been dismantled and carted to a flying field for investigation. And that field is only a little over thirty miles from Wilmington, Ohio. It is over at the Air Material Command at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio. Have you heard any word concerning these ‘ships’? Neither have I.
“If there is anyone reading this letter who has not been able to get a copy of Scully’s Behind The Flying Saucers and you wish a copy, get in touch with me and I’ll see that you get your copy. It’s worth reading and worth thinking about.
“I would like to thank the editor for printing this letter.”
Whitacre’ championing of Ohio as the center of the flying saucer world is not surprising. Ohio was on his mind! What stands out, though, is the casual conspiracy-mongering. Whitacre showed something of the paranoia buried even in the most conventional heart of America.
