BURLINGTON — Kent Senter knows his days are numbered.
He has cancer, the worst kind, he tells people. So, he is marking off items from his “bucket list,” those things he wanted to do before he dies.
Be an astronaut. That can’t happen. Drive an Indy race car. That can’t happen, either. Create a conference that shines a light on a subject many consider taboo.
UFOs.
That’ll happen this weekend in Greensboro’s Terrace Theatre.
When it comes to UFOs, Senter is no fly-by-nighter. He helped found the North Carolina chapter of the Mutual UFO Network nearly 20 years ago, and he has investigated dozens of cases.
Plus, he has seen UFOs twice.
Oh, he’s heard it. He’s been ridiculed and heard people walking by, whistling the theme to the movie, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.’’ His mom even told him years ago, “I don’t want to hear about it.’’
But he believes. And this weekend, he will bring in some heavyweights — researchers, writers, college professors, retired military officers from Belgium and England, and government officials from Chile and France.
All of them work in the field of what’s known as ufology. And all of them are coming on Senter’s dime. He’s covering the entire cost of the two-day conference, and he wants a serious discussion over what has been seen in the sky.
The governments of France, Belgium and Chile acknowledge the existence of UFOs. But the U.S. government won’t. Our government won’t admit to investigating UFOs, and pilots don’t talk about it publicly.
Senter hates that, or as he likes to say, “That makes me sick to my stomach.’’
So, from his two-story house in a subdivision of manicured lawns near Burlington’s E.M. Holt Elementary, he sits around his dining room table and plans his conference.
One afternoon this week, he had a Snowman coffee mug at his left elbow and his walking cane at his side. He needs it for support because he can’t stand for longer than 10 minutes because of the tumors running up his spine.
Stacks of tickets and papers covered his table. Soon, he’ll be picking up speakers from the airport, getting them to a hotel off High Point Road and preparing to pull off one of the biggest moments of his life.
“I’d like my children to know the truth,’’ says Senter, a married father of four. “It’s not going to happen in my lifetime. I know I’m going to die. But I’d like to see it happen in their lifetime. I want the truth out there.’’
To Senter, that is not reference to the cult TV series “X-Files.’’ It’s real life.
Senter will turn 60 in September. As a kid growing up in Virginia, he stood in his front yard and saw the Soviet satellite Sputnik. A few years later, he looked up in the sky again and spotted an orange disk with a cone-shaped light.
The year: 1962. He was 10.
“Are flying saucers real?’’ Senter asked his best friend’s dad during a backyard cookout two weeks later.
“I had a friend of mine see one of those things,’’ the dad responded. “They locked him up, and when he got out, who’s going to listen to him?’’
Senter didn’t say a word to anyone after that. That comment, as he says today, “put the fear of God in me.’’
Senter’s second UFO sighting came 23 years later. He was living in Durham, and working two jobs when he came home one night, got out of his car and saw something out of the corner of his eye.
He turned and saw it — three yellow balls, all perfect circles in a row, hovering, not making a sound.
He watched, ran to the front door and rang the doorbell to get his then-wife to come out. She saw it and ran back inside. He then got a flashlight and clicked it on and off a few times at the sky. The three yellow balls vanished.
A minute later, a narrow rectangle of white light appeared. It hovered and took off, swaying slightly from side to side like a falling leaf. He followed it in his car and watched it head toward the horizon without a sound.
Senter says that episode in 1985 changed his life. A few years later, Senter formed the North Carolina chapter of the Mutual UFO Network with a few others, including the famous UFO researcher George Fawcett of Lincolnton.
Fawcett died in January. Senter knows he could die soon. He has the same cancer that killed Jim Valvano, N.C. State’s legendary basketball coach. So, with his cane near his side, he sits at his dining room table and works.
It’s for his conference, his bucket list.
“I can’t sit here,’’ he says, “and do nothing.’’
Source: http://www.news-record.com/news/local_news/article_38f314e2-de0b-11e2-9fe2-001a4bcf6878.html
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