One more peripheral afterthought surfaced in the middle of the training grind. Something else I could stuff into my PPK. I spent little time pondering it. Bad mistake.
A few months before the flight, I was enjoying lunch at the Hilton hotel near the Cape with my car-racing friend Jim Rathmann, when he introduced me to a Miami friend of his. Jim was fond of this old man and thought I would enjoy meeting him, too. A jolly, chubby guy with long white hair and a silvery beard, the oddly named F. Herrick Herrick was striking to look at: a cross between Santa Claus and everyone’s favorite grandfather. During the casual conversation, the subject of Spanish treasure from galleons sunk around the Florida coast came up. It turned out that Herrick had Spanish gold coins. It might be interesting, I thought, to fly some of that antique gold in space as a way to connect past exploration with our lunar trip.
During the lunch, Herrick tossed me his keys and asked me to go out to his enormous fire-red Cadillac convertible and bring him his briefcase. I did as he asked and brought the case back to the table. Herrick opened it and, sure enough, he had a hoard of gold coins and jewelry he said he had salvaged from a sunken Spanish treasure ship.
To say I was impressed is an understatement; I fell in love with the guy. Herrick struck me as a jovial, flamboyant, romantic soldier-of-fortune type, who told me tales of big-game hunting, directing movies in Africa, and other exciting adventures. He was so much fun and had done so much with his life that I never stopped to think how odd it was that he drove around with gold and jewels in a car trunk.
I didn’t buy any gold from him in the end. Instead, our flight carried some Spanish silver, which I obtained from another source. Herrick proposed a different idea, eagerly suggesting something else to take on the flight. “Commemorative postal covers,” he proposed and then had to explain what they were. I had never heard of them.
Herrick, evidently, was an avid collector and dealer of rare stamps. He offered to supply me with a bunch of lightweight envelopes, bearing a mission-related image, which could be stamped and postmarked the day of launch and also on the day of return. Inside, he’d place a card describing the spaceflight. He’d make them at his own expense and send them to me. In return, he asked only to have some after the flight for his own use. They would be mementos of my flight for the rest of my life, and I could also give them to family and friends, he continued. It sounded like a no-lose situation for me. Sure, I replied casually, get them to me before the flight and I’ll take them.
I was very clear, however, in our conversation that day. We had a verbal agreement: he could give his covers away, but until the Apollo program was over, or I retired from NASA and the air force—whichever event was later—we agreed that neither of us would sell them. I didn’t want to do anything that would embarrass either myself or NASA, and I believed Herrick was as good as his word. It was a huge lapse in judgment on my part to trust this stranger: I was too old to believe in Santa Claus.
At first, Herrick lived up to his promises. I discussed a cover design with a commercial artist colleague of his, and about two months before the flight Herrick sent me 144 covers. Most had a design on them showing the phases of the moon. We’d agreed that I would keep around 100 of them, and he would get the other 44 back after the flight. I added them to the items I planned to put in my PPK. I also added a Wright Brothers commemorative cover, autographed by Orville Wright himself, sent to me by Forrest Cook, a friend of my parents. Forrest, who lived in a small town just outside of Jackson, was a kind, gentle man and asked me to take the cover to the moon for him. I was happy to help a family friend and right after the mission sent it back to him. I added all of these covers, and everything else I took, to the PPK contents list that I provided to Deke.
Jim Irwin added some postal covers to his PPK, too, and made sure Deke knew about them. He carried a few covers with a shamrock logo on them, many of which he gave to NASA friends after the flight. He even took more than eighty covers as a personal favor for Barbara Gordon, Dick Gordon’s wife. She was an avid collector, and although her covers took up a good amount of Jim’s PPK weight allowance, that was the kind of generous guy he was. Those envelopes flew on the mission and were given right back to Barbara.
I was done with my PPK list and thought I was done with thinking about covers for the flight. Then came another meal, another introduction to a new face, and another offer.
Dave, Jim, and I were in the middle of a tough training day at the Cape when Dave said all three of us were invited to dinner that night at the home of Horst Walter Eiermann, a German who I was told worked for a company that manufactured part of the Apollo launch vehicle. As Dave later explained to a congressional committee, he considered Eiermann a “rather close friend,” with whom he’d had dinner a number of times. Dave said he believed it would be a really good idea for us to go, so Jim and I said yes, without asking more.
We were having cocktails before dinner when Dave and Eiermann started talking about postal covers. As Jim and I sat there and listened to the conversation, Eiermann suggested to Dave that Apollo 15 should carry a hundred special covers for a stamp dealer he knew in Germany named Hermann Sieger. He had previously arranged signed stamp deals with at least twenty of my fellow astronauts.
Jim and I, the rookies in the room, were assured that all of the Apollo crews had done this before. It’s not a big deal, we were told. We’ll be covered. We were reminded, rather ghoulishly, that insurance companies were no longer offering free life insurance to Apollo crews, and we needed to think of our families by making deals such as this.
Here was the plan: Apollo 15 would fly the covers, the crew would sign them, Eiermann would give them to Sieger, and then Sieger would hold them until the Apollo program was finished, or until we had all left the program. At that point, Sieger would be free to sell them, but only through private sales—no public, commercial visibility.
In return, Sieger said he would set up bank accounts for us, place seven thousand dollars in each, and if we left the money there and let it grow, the funds should pay for our children’s college educations. Even back then it was not a lot of money, but when added to our small air force salaries, it would make a big difference. With the covers stored away after the flight, no one would know the plan until we were retired from NASA or the air force.
Dave and Walter both talked quite a lot about the plan that night. It was, essentially, a sales pitch. Everything was laid out for Jim and me, and already felt close to a done deal. Jim, who went along with everything Dave asked, said yes. Then it was my turn, and all heads turned to me.
I nodded my head and said, “Sure.”
It was, without a doubt, the worst mistake I ever made.
That was the last I heard or thought about the covers until after the flight. I never saw them, never heard about them—nothing. I never saw or signed any written agreement, and never met Eiermann again. I assumed Dave would place the covers on his PPK list to submit to Deke. I knew all the covers from Herrick were on mine. I listed all the stuff I personally took, held nothing back, and had nothing to hide.
Had I thought it through at the time, I would have realized that the agreement with Eiermann wasn’t right. No one was really supposed to arrange to make money from the program while they were still in it. Even if the money would only appear after we had left NASA, the whole proposal was still shady.
I didn’t break any formal rules, but in hindsight I broke an unspoken trust. As NASA Administrator Robert Frosch later admitted to a Senate committee, the agency’s casual stance was that it was “generally understood—but not explicitly stated—that PPK items were personal memorabilia and not intended for future commercialization.” Nevertheless, in hindsight, I believe that agreeing to Eiermann’s deal was wrong.