How much we owe to the countless eyewitnesses of these wonderful flying creatures! During the recent revision of my first book, Searching for Ropens (soon to be published in its third edition), I have been touched by the contributions of ordinary persons who have spoken out for the truth. Other persons have also made our successes possible.
Part of the Acknowledgments from the third edition of Searching for Ropens (subject to revisions and editing before publication):
Ironically, a key to successfully exploring a sparsely populated wilderness is people-skills. On a remote tropical island, in 2004, I learned how much I needed other people. I also learned the value of working in harmony with those who share some but not all of my beliefs, and I learned that concept over many years, including before and after my adventures on Umboi Island.
My father and mother, educational psychologists, inspired those around them by lifting self-esteem and bringing together coworkers and others who had thought themselves incompatible. I have tried inspiring others, though I was the one encouraged and inspired by my American associates in cryptozoology, and I’ve probably learned more from inadvertently following one or two methods used by my father and mother, techniques for bringing together divergent people, than by any conscious attempt at following my parents. How deep was their leadership! . . .
. . . Eyewitness testimonies of natives, Australians, and the American veteran Duane Hodgkinson contributed, in the early years, priceless evidence. Reports from other areas of the world later supported our strange theory of modern living pterosaurs, including reported sightings in England, Spain, the Netherlands, various parts of Africa, Singapore, the Philippines, and other countries.
I began receiving sighting reports of living pterosaurs in the United States in 2004, eventually accumulating enough that I wrote the book Live Pterosaurs in America. How great their contributions! Many American eyewitnesses risk not only ridicule in general but the respect of friends and family for simply telling the truth about what they encountered. I vow they will not have suffered in vain.
What more could we ask of the United States Marine Eskin Kuhn and the little girl Patty Carson, two eyewitnesses of “pterodactyls” at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in the middle of the twentieth century? They paid close attention to those flying creatures and later drew detailed sketches that defy any misidentification conjecture that any skeptic might throw at them. Thank you, Eskin; thank you, Patty.
The love of my wife and three daughters strengthened me to leave the comforts of home, making it possible for me to participate in a wonderful quest to bless many members of the human family with knowledge of the truth. . . .
.
Five of the many eyewitnesses of modern living pterosaurs
.
When I was around [ten years old] and on the way to a camp in North Carolina, I saw one soaring high in the sky. It was an amazing sight. . . . It looked like a pterodactyl!
.
“I suddenly saw, parallel with the water, quite a distance away, a flying object that was strange. Why? Because we knew it was quite far away, but it was as big as a regular bird would appear up close.”
The three “dragons” observed flying over a freeway near Griffith Park (Los Angeles, CA), in March of 2013 is an example. The eyewitness said, “their tails had triangular points.”
###
.