Daniel Fry

On July 4, 1949, at the White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico where he was employed, Fry had planned to join the Independence day festivities that evening in nearby Las Cruces, but he missed the last bus.

Finding the temperature in his room at the Bachelor Officers Quarters (BOQ) uncomfortably hot, he decided to take a walk and explore a path in the desert where he had never been before.

There, Fry claimed a 30-foot (10 m) diameter, 16 foot (5 m) high "oblate spheroid" landed in front of him, and he talked remotely with the pilot who operated the craft from a "mother ship" 900 miles (1400 km) above Earth.

Mid-way through its waning years in 1974, Understanding was donated[9] 55 acres (220,000 m2) of land including eight buildings near Tonopah, Arizona, by Enid Smith.

Understanding Inc. was considered by some to be a cult,[10] but Fry insisted that it wasn't in a 1969 Daily Courier article: "The group is not mystic, he says, and is not a flying saucer watching organization although some members hold definite beliefs and interests in both areas.

"[11] During the early 1970s, Professor Robert S. Ellwood of the University of Southern California studied many new and unconventional religious and spiritual groups in the United States.

He also published other books such as Atoms, Galaxies and Understanding, To Men of Earth, Steps to the Stars, Curve of Development, Can God Fill Teeth?

[15] In December, 1978, Fry would note with frustration the dwindling membership and the library and kitchen at the Tonopah site were burned to the ground by an arsonist.

[16] Less than a year later, the Sellmans quit, along with a number of other long time board members like Tahahlita, because of Daniel's refusal to negotiate a settlement over the Tonopah site lawsuit related to Enid Smith's contested will.

In his professional life, Fry worked as a "powder man" or explosives supervisor in the 1930s and 1940s on such jobs as the Salinas Dam near San Luis Obispo, California, for the Basic Magnesium Corporation and on the Pan American Highway in Honduras.

From 1949 until 1954, Daniel worked at Aerojet designing, building and installing transducers for control, feedback and measurement of rockets during flight and static tests.

Clara died in 1916 and left Daniel and his older sister, Florence, to be raised by their grandmother while Fred found work where he could as a carpenter and labourer.

He divorced Elma in 1964 while living in Merlin, Oregon, and took up common-law residence with Bertha (aka Tahahlita) until moving to Tonopah, Arizona, in the mid 1970s.