Roswell embraces past and turns a buck

More than 30 years passed, and the incident was generally forgotten. But then, an Army officer who took part in the recovery of the debris came forward to assert that it had been from an alien spacecraft, and that the government had engaged in a cover-up.

Eventually, the Air Force disclosed it had been part of Project Mogul, a top-secret effort to monitor Soviet-era nuclear testing. But that story never satisfied believers who advanced tales of alien bodies recovered in the desert.

The Roswell Incident was born — and with it, a fascination that spread from supermarket tabloids to the popular imagination.

But the local UFO boom really began in 1992, when Haut and Glenn Dennis — a local mortician who claimed that a nurse on the base had told him of autopsies performed on aliens taken from the wreckage — founded the UFO museum.

The point, Shuster says, is not to prove that an alien spacecraft really crashed, but simply to present information from both sides of the debate and let visitors make up their own minds.

"All we do is ask people to think outside the box," she says.

Each month, the museum greets visitors from all 50 states and 35 countries — 2.5 million since its founding. According to one analysis, it generates $35 million in indirect spending each year for the city of 50,000 residents.

Shuster said her father never imagined it would be so wildly popular, but now she sees herself as the caretaker of his legacy.

The museum has outgrown its home at a former movie theater and soon will occupy a new $25 million building. Shuster acknowledges there's been friction with some souvenir shop owners who complain retailers will be hurt when the museum moves five blocks up Main Street. She jokes that she no longer feels all the knives thrown into her back.

Still, it's clear she can't entirely ignore what is being said.

"Yes, it's personal for me," she says, sniffing back tears during an interview at her museum office. "People say, `She's too intense. She takes it too personally.' Well, how much more personal can it get than running your daddy's business?"

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