In 1965, I inquired about joining the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO), at that time the most famous UFO membership organization after NICAP. APRO was formed in 1952, NICAP in 1956. The letter shown here (Jan. 18, 1965) from Coral Lorenzen is essentially my first contact with Coral, who founded and operated APRO with her husband, Jim.
While NICAP maintained an impressive file of important domestic, and to a lesser extent, foreign UFO cases and was noteworthy especially for lobbying Congress to initiate a Congressional UFO investigation, APRO's concentration involved a wealth of international UFO reports -- and a very sober attitude about UFO occupant cases, the kind that a cautious NICAP wouldn't warm up to for several years, and even then not until the evidence for occupants increased significantly. For NICAP, the Barney and Betty Hill story tipped the balance, as did the Pascagoula (Hickson and Parker) case. APRO, however, had already investigated and documented similar cases for years.
Unfortunately, the far less reputable "contactees" of the world, already holding reign for a long time, had firmly established their absurd stories of visits with residents of Venus and other nearby planets, and their often easily-determined lies had muddied the UFO research waters profoundly, leaving little or no room for credible UFO occupant/abduction/trace evidence reports.
APRO folded with Coral Lorenzen's death in the eighties, a few years after Jim passed on. I'll post more about APRO soon.
