The 12 Daves of Christmas
Dave Emmons working on first book
Jill Moon
Dave Emmons
ALTON — Dave Emmons has been busy.
He's working on his first book this holiday season that you could say is "top secret" — like the UFO and ET sightings he researches and examines, including those experiences of his own, as a host on the Massachusetts-based Disclosure News Network (DNN).
Emmons, 72, is also a musician of 45 years and a frequent guest WBGZ "Matinee Madness" show. He currently is talking to a couple of bands about being a substitute drummer. He went to school at Broadcast Center in St. Louis, Lewis and Clark Community College in Godfrey, and Lindenwood University in St. Charles, Missouri.
"I didn't work in journalism that much because journalism doesn't really pay that much," said Emmons who was with the Las Vegas-based KCOR Digital Radio Network prior to DNN.
Hangar 1 Publishing — which covers new science, odd wildlife research, strange disappearances, mysteries, life after death, celebrities, UFOs and other unexplained events — has asked Emmons not to disclose the title of his upcoming book.
But Emmons did disclose how he thinks he got his name.
"My parents heard the name biblically: David," Emmons said. "I think that's why they called me that; I'm not sure if my mom knew somebody. My older brother, they knew a guy, a real nice guy, and named him after him."
With 10 brothers and sisters, he said Christmastime wasn't so much about money and gifts, which would take a lot for so many children at the family home in Godfrey. His 94-year-old mother still lives there.
"We had love and we had fun," Emmons said. "Whatever we had, we were happy with. It was not as commercial as it is today. We played outside; we didn't have computers."
Emmons, who said he has an IQ of at least 138, was an Army platoon leader in 1969-70 in Vietnam, serving out of Fort Benning, Georgia.
"I was a sergeant in Vietnam, utilized as a lieutenant, in charge of 42 guys," he recalled. "If I wanted to stay in, they would commission me as an officer. But I didn't want to stay in. I started in nuclear weapons, but I didn't like spending time with military intelligence guys.
"I didn't like it as a 19- to 20-year-old guy and couldn't go for it," he said. "I had to get the chaplain to get me out."
Since then he's done a little bit of everything. He lived in Alaska for two years. His first retirement was from Premcor Refinery, now Wood River Phillips 66 Refinery, in Roxana, which closed in 2001. He then had his own restaurant, Dave's Rendezvous, on Homer Adams for a year.
He went on to work with the Red Cross in disaster management in and then AmeriCorps, helping the elderly. He officially retired from full-time work in 2010 and began gathering information for his upcoming book. He said he started traveling and doing photography, including that of an extraterrestrial in Sedona, Arizona, which he plans to feature in his book.
About a month ago, he conducted an DNN interview with Uri Geller, a magician, television personality and self-proclaimed psychic. "He just wants more love in the world," Emmons said of Geller.
Emmons' work is on DNN's YouTube and Facebook sitres, as well as his personal Facebook page, LinkedIn and Twitter.
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Jill Moon is an award-winning journalist and features editor for Hearst Newspapers. She also is editor-in-chief of Hearst's award-winning On the Edge of the Weekend monthly culture and entertainment magazine.