posted 10-06-2015 12:06 PM               

"I've never told anybody. I've never told my wife," he once said, and even sued a ball manufacturer that claimed to have made balls he used on the moon.

(Shepard's moon balls were, in fact, driving range balls made by Spalding.)

...Apollo photos owned by Jack Powers were found in a Fort Smith attic, said Joe Murfin, chairman of the Daisy Airgun Museum board of directors. Powers started working at Daisy in 1960 and was a senior public relations executive for the firm for more than 20 years.

Autographed photos of the crews of Apollo 12, 14, 16 and 17 are among the items now on permanent [display] at Daisy's museum in downtown Rogers. A handwritten note with with the Apollo 14 crew photo states "To Jack Powers... Our most sincere thanks for the Daisy golf balls by Victor... They are out of this world!"

...The balls bear the Daisy logo. The company has been known for its BB guns for more than 125 years, but golf balls were part of its catalogue when it was owned by by Victor Comptometer Corp.

The balls made it to the moon because of Powers' friendship with Al Chop, who worked in public relations for NASA at the time. Powers suggested sending the golf balls along on the mission.

1. If Shepard was being honest in saying he didn't even tell his wife, would he have told a golf company executive? Would he have put such in writing?

2. Local news station KFSM filmed a segment that shows the autographed crew photo in question (see stills below). The crew's signatures appear to be autopens. But is the inscription in Shepard's hand?

3. Is the inscription enough to conclude that Shepard (if it is Shepard's handwriting) is referring to the golf balls he flew to the moon?

posted 10-06-2015 07:26 PM               

• The signatures are Autopen machine signed. This does not rule out the dedication is authentically signed by an astronaut. I have seen Autopenned photos with authentic dedications before. But, it is very uncommon and weighs against the likelihood the inscription is authentic.

• Shepard typically signed inscriptions in a neat, carefully applied, elegant script. I searched through dozens of verified exemplars and could not find any long inscriptions written in printed block lettering like the questioned item.

• When Shepard did write in printed block, it was typically a short dedication, such as, "To Bob." In these cases, it is neatly formed with consistent initial capitalization only -- unlike the haphazard baselines and random capitalization we see in the questioned item.

• Shepard would consistently dedicate "To Name -- " using a long dash. This item is dedicated "To Jack Powers ..." (Ellipsis instead of long dash.) I could not find Shepard using an ellipsis in any of the dozens of writing samples I reviewed, including lengthy handwritten letters.

• Significant formation inconsistencies between this and verified exemplars. Notably, I could not find any examples where Shepard used a lower case "e" formed like the one in the questioned item. In printed block writing, his lower case "e"s were consistently formed like an upper case (E).

• Note the huge gaps between the words in the questioned item. In verified exemplars, the words are spaced much closer together.

Here are some images that illustrate the significant differences between this item and verified exemplars.

posted 10-13-2015 01:18 PM               

There is no explicit statement that Daisy balls went to the moon - only an implication, if that - so along with the inscription writing style and span between Apollo 14 and ASTP I would think the Apollo 14 item most likely a NASA PR piece and nothing more.

Your additional information may fill in some blanks but on the surface I'd say the NW Arkansas Democrat and Gazette, along with Daisy Museum, are promoting a questionable association.

posted 10-13-2015 02:07 PM               

The lead I was hoping to follow is not possible because the individual has died. According to Joe Murfin, the connection between Daisy and the astronauts was the close friendship between Jack Powers and Al Chop, who at the time was director of public affairs at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston.

According to Murfin, relaying a story told to him by Powers' son, it was Chop who gave Al Shepard the idea to fly golf balls and it was Chop who sourced the balls through his friend, Powers.

My hope was that Chop was still alive, but he died on Jan. 15, 2006.

Now, this is just speculation, but given the mention that the above pictured piece came through PAO, perhaps the inscriptions are in Al Chop's hand? If that is the case, then it removes Shepard's involvement entirely in thanking Daisy for the golf balls.

posted 01-03-2020 06:44 PM               

The signatures on the matted photo are indeed autopen and the inscription is not in Shepard's hand. At least those two "facts," even though its only my own opinion, I will stand by.

posted 01-03-2020 08:05 PM               

Below is the Shepard interview video I'm referencing — start at about 1:02:00 in. Alan says pretty definitively, "There was no commercialism [tied to the moon golf shots]. One company tried to claim it was their golf balls but we cut them off quickly."

Maybe the brand name of the golf balls is a mystery that will not be solved until a lunar tourist(s) finds them!

posted 01-04-2020 03:53 AM               

The golf issue is an interesting story, which is slightly touched on in the 2019 movie "Fallen Astronaut" by Dutch filmmaker Frank Herrebout. A little part talks about a golf pro named Danny Lawler who was asked by Deke Slayton to provide some golf lessons and via Lawler, the astronauts ended up wearing the Lacoste polo.

Apollo 14 moonwalkers carried the MET - Modular Equipment Transporter, a pull-cart worthy of a lunar caddy. I believe Shepard carried an Iron-6 at the base of a geologic instrument.