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Editor: Our New Jersey Correspondent, Bob Button, has been reminiscing again, and does us the favor of putting his thoughts into one of his Letters from New Jersey.
In many respects, Bob and I walked parallel paths so far as the space program was concerned. He was a Public Affairs guy on the corporate and/or government side, I was a journalist. Both of us followed the American program through its ups and downs for more years than we like to consider. But Bob got closer to the main players than I did in many ways; he had to travel with them, arrange for their public appearances, and drink with them at the end of the day. A lot of us scribblers would have liked to do the end of the day stuff with them, but we knew in our heart of hearts that -- even then -- they would never let their hair down to us the way they did to Bob and his co-crafters, no matter how buddy-buddy the interviews seemed to be on TV. So it's nice to get one of these letters every whip-stitch just to let us know what it was really like. Here's one that came from New Jersey just the other day:
Enjoy.
Howdy, Jim:
Just got a Russian news clipping forwarded by Bobbie Slayton, Deke's widow. Still hard to believe that Astronaut Deke Slayton has been dead for 16 years come June. In any case, the news clipping was from the Russian publication "LIFE" (with an upside-down i). It says Alexei Leonov had another heart attack. He nearly died
He is one helluva guy, Jim. A Hero of the Soviet Union, a former member of the Politburo (sorta like our Congress), a minor poet and a very talented artist. I got to know him after the Apollo-Soyuz mission when the two crews toured the world. I really impressed Alex when they arrived in New York - got him and his wife booked into Frank Sinatra's suite at the Waldorf Astoria; he was especially crazy about Frank's huge white TV, thanked me profusely. Like many Russians, he's a big Sinatra fan.
Alexei even played a small role in what became the romance of Bob and Regina Button.
But, as usual, I digress...
I know you remember Alexei as the first human ever to walk in space when he floated outside of Voskhod 2 for 20 minutes 44 years ago - that was March 18, 1965; a hairy adventure, closer to disaster than many folks knew back then. You may recall that Alex could barely squeeze back into Voskhod wearing that big bulky space suit. He had to vent a whole lot of oxygen from that suit to reduce its girth...only then could fellow cosmonaut Pavel Belyayev help get him back into the spacecraft and secure the hatch. It was close!
Right: Spacewalk seen on Soviet TV.
The end of 1972 brought the close of the American lunar landing program when the crew of Apollo 17, Gene Cernan, Ron Evans and Harrison Schmidt, splashed down on December 18th.
A very frightened world wanted the big superpowers to play nice - it was the Cold War, remember? Nuclear weapons aimed at each other, spies in the sky, stuff like that. So the two nations put their heads together and came up with the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP). Americans and Soviets (we didn't
Right: Apollo-Soyuz, painted by Alexei Leonov.
Cynics called ASTP a public relations scheme, but we at NASA didn't mind, it was after all another human space flight. Deke was deliriously happy! One of the original seven Mercury astronauts, Deke had been grounded by an irregular heartbeat for more than 13 years. Now he'd finally get his chance to fly his first space mission.
Apollo-Soyuz - some called it Apollo 18 - was a tricky rendezvous of two unlike, foreign spacecraft 230 nautical miles above planet Earth. Tom Stafford was in command because Deke, his NASA senior, was technically a rookie.
Left: Deke Slayton (upside down to camera) and Alexei Leonov.
Suffice it to say the mission came off without a hitch, cosmonauts speakin' some sorta English, astronauts responding in halting Russian... When Tom and Alex shook hands inside the linked spacecraft all was well with the world - at least for a little while.
I had rejoined NASA via a Presidential appointment as an exchange executive, having once been a NASA public affairs officer. I was on civic leave from TRW to spend a year working as a deputy to John Donnelly, NASA's Director of Public Affairs. For me it was old home week.
During the mission I worked at the NASA news center in Houston, manning the joint Apollo-Soyuz press center. I tried to befriend the Soviet information officers without much success. So when the mission ended I stole their Apollo-Soyuz sign - what used to be above their door at the news center is above my office door here in Jersey City as we speak.
 After the mission as the Apollo-Soyuz crews completed their around-the-world good will tour they ended up in New York City. I was NASA's advance man to set up hotel rooms and such for the five crew members and their families, the Soviet press, and a handful of officials of one sort or another. We took over two whole floors plus one floor of the Waldorf's VIP tower for the astronauts and cosmonauts - they had celebrity status then.
I had just met my future wife Regina and hired her to be an American version of a Soviet key lady... She, with the help of a squad of New York's Finest, had a desk on the VIP floor and screened visitors and deliveries to the spacemen. The crews were hot celebrities so security was pretty tight.
Despite our best efforts we nearly had an international incident. One of the Soviet newsmen (or whatever) failed to return from a shopping trip into Midtown Manhattan. In no time the NKVD and NYPD were combing the shopping Meccas of New York. Was Leonov's triumphant world tour gonna be ruined by a defection? Oh, my God!
But the elderly Pravda reporter turned up - in the emergency room at Bellvue. He had collapsed from his whirlwind spending spree But he was okay and made it back to the USSR safe and sound with armloads of loot.
By now Regina was the darling of the cosmonauts so Leonov invited us all out to JFK to see them off on their return to the Soviet Union. He and Valeri gave us a tour of their Ilushin jet airliner before they pushed off and headed home.
Leonov and Tom Stafford went on to become Air Force generals. Vance Brand later flew several space shuttle missions; in fact, he didn't retire from NASA until last year.
 Rear: Tom Stafford, Alexei Leonov.
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of one last fall, spent a long time in intensive care. But Alexei at 74 is a tough old bird. LIFE quotes him saying, "Relatives, do not worry in vain! I have survived again!"
call them Russians) were to join up - way, way up in space - a friendly gesture of international cooperation, smiling space travelers from antagonist countries hugging each other in the heavens.
The third American crew member was Vance Brand, an ex-marine pilot who had joined NASA as a civilian astronaut.
Leonov's Soyuz 19 crewmate was cosmonaut Valeri Kubasov.
Bob Button.