Large White Glowing Cross With Haze

This story is amazing and true, and I still cannot understand it.  
Back in 1976 I had just been out of High School for a couple of years, and was still living at home.  Our home was located several miles outside of Scottsville, Kentucky in a location named Petroleum near the Tennessee border.  We lived on a hilltop,  and could always clearly see anything up in the sky.  I remember the following unusual incident clearly.  One particular night we were all in our living room watching television, and it was around 11:00 PM.  My Dad decided to go out into the back yard to check on our well pump that we were having problems with.  The night was dark and clear, and no stars were visable at all.  Dad went out the back door and all was quiet for a while.  All of a sudden Dad came practically running back into the living room and told us to come outside and see "this".  He said, "Get out here because you have got to see this".  My Dad was a U.S. Army veteran, and I thought nothing could scare him - but "this" did.  We could see the scared look on his face, and we wondered what "this" was.  We all hurriedly went out the back door to the yard.  Dad then told us to look up in the sky, and what we saw was truly amazing to say the least.  Directly up in the northern sky was a very large glowing white cross.  Trust me, there was absolutely no mistake about it - it WAS a CROSS, and it was glowing really bright with sort of a halo around it.  The cross was clearly visable.  The whole thing was solid white.  The object remained stationary and never moved at all.  As I recall our neighbors heard us and came outside to see it for themselves.  We were all just staring at this large white cross that we all could clearly see.  We stayed outside for thirty minutes or longer just staring at this beautiful white cross.  Later on we heard on our local regional news about many other people who had also seen this enigmatic cross object.  It was reported as an "unidentified sky object".  Why didn't they say it was a c! ross?  W ere they afraid of something?  I always wondered.  My family and I are honest people and don't make up tales.  This story is one-hundred percent true as I have told it.  I know that we all saw something amazing that we were intended to see in my opinion.  Somehow I felt blessed to have seen this.  People may think that I am crazy or made this story up, but I did neither one.  What we saw that night back in 1976 was something somehow beyond our comprehension to understand.  As I have gotten older I now realize that their are things that are really seen or observed everywhere that people cannot understand - such as UFOs.  This is one such case, and if it was a UFO then it was quite real.  I just felt that now was the right time to share my unusual story with others.  
Thank you, and keep up the good and important work. ---- ((initials deleted))
Witness indicates that the date of the sighting is approximate.  PD