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| One of many photos I shot using Mark as a model. |
On Sunday, about one month ago, CBS's "60minutes" aired a segment about UFO's. I was intrigued when a female pilot along with her wingman sighted and documented with radar and a gun camera an alien spacecraft. The first thing I thought about, with a chuckle, was that McCandlish is at it again. As has been lately her habit, my wife followed the added information about UFO's and the government's stance on such things.
Naturally, Area 51 came into her view on the laptop which took her a step further that just shocked her and me. Mark McCandlish was found dead from a shotgun blast to the head. Preliminary report say suicide in his home in Redding, CA. That just didn't make any sense.
I first met Mark in Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA. We didn't spend much time together because he was majoring in car design and I was majoring in illustration. Graduating a year or so earlier than Mark did, I met him again as a fellow employee working as a designer and tech illustrator at General Dynamics/ Pomona Division. Apparently, he became disenchanted with the career opportunities afforded him in Detroit.
We worked on a few projects together. One was an involved cutaway I started of the Phalanx Defense System. While I enjoyed doing cutaways, Mark reveled in it. Eventually, I was taken off the project to work another brochure. Here's the revised version of the one we worked on.
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| "R2D2" with a 20mm Gatlin gun! |
Mark was working on another gun system cutaway when I left GD for the freelance world. I believe he only stayed for two years. I believe a year after he quit, in 1983, the Electronics Division left for San Diego creating the breakup of the graphics group. Because he lived in South Pasadena, where I also lived, we'd carpool the long trip from there to Pomona. After he quit, Mark would come by my studio and hang. On occasion, I'd ask him to pose for me for a storyboard I was working on. We did try working together on a project or two, but I knew it would not workout because Mark was so meticulous to the point of actually trying too hard and in the presentation art business speed is of the utmost.
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| Mark loved working with the technical engineers making change after change! |
Over the years, we seldom communicated especially after he moved to Redding, CA. I got a call from him talking about his UFO discoveries and Area 51 sometime around the mid nineties. I don't really have a specific timeline on these phone conversations except to say that I was mildly interested and I suppose Mark could sense that. I do remember being "anchored" to the ground by Little Leaguers. I now feel rather guilty for not entertaining Mark's findings, but he was always kinda nerdy trying to be some part of a group or philosophy but was just not quite fitting in. He was a very good illustrator especially when it came to the nuts and bolts of some design. Mark really had an understanding about how things worked and if he didn't, he sure as hell would look it up. I did follow his many illustrative Popular Science covers until the computer changed all that.
In 2001, we moved back to Louisiana, and heard some things about him getting in the hair of the powers that be asking questions and finding parts to the puzzle that were ignored or hidden from the view of the general public. Therein, lays the many conspiracy theories that abound. Apparently, Mark felt certain that this whole UFO phenomenon was "a carefully protected technology co-opted by an as-yet-unknown group, and the sequestration of this technology has provided that organization tremendous leverage in world politics, finance and international conflicts over the past five decades."
Skeptics are suspicious of the fact that Mark offered to give testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee and contacted Senator Marco Rubio on this just prior to his death… His potential testimony along with his obsession with building the ARV (ALIEN REPRODUCTION VEHICLE) probably got him killed.
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