I launched the Astronaut Fan Club in June 1959 just a few months after the Mercury Seven astronauts were introduced to the world. My father was present at this incredible event that included getting to meet Alan Shepherd, the first American to fly above the atmosphere and safely splashed down. This was the stuff of science fiction made real. It was also the most inspiring event to occur at that time in my life. I was 9.

The Astronaut Fan Club was my first dive into design and entrepreneurship; at the time I had formed the club with me as its only member in order to get NASA swag. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration was the single most important agency in the coming space age. The United States was leading the USSR in the space race — so it seemed. As a result of losing to Sputnik 1, the first satellite to orbit the world in 1957, the U.S. the was finally on the verge of conquering the heavens.

I was totally fixated on the Mercury Seven and as forewarning of my lifelong compulsion to collect stuff, I began acquiring all-things NASA-related. The fan club was a rationale to ask NASA representatives to write me and send printed materials that were produced in abundance on all the rocketry, missions and space stuff. I asked for photographs of all kinds, and received what I asked for. I’d mail dozens of requests monthly, and like clockwork the responses — in large manila envelopes — filled my postbox. The amount of material was impressive, as were the letters that accompanied them from scientists, technicians, test pilots and the Mercury Seven and Gemini astronauts themselves. Signed photographs, some with actual handwritten signatures and dedications added up. I even got a prize, a personalized portrait from Gus Grissom, the second American in suborbital space and first astronaut to perish in 1967 during a missioon. I stopped acquiring (and pestering NASA) five years before Apollo 11 landed its crew on the moon in 1969. While I continued being interested in space exploration, I never pursued the passion or wrote another fan letter again.

Recently, I found the files I had dutifully stored away in their original folders. For decades I moved the bulky piles of brochures, booklets and photos with me to every apartment and house I ever lived in, always finding a place for the two stuffed legal boxes. In attics and closets, they sat removed from other “design” collections I continued to accumulate. However, during this, my currently ruthless concerted act of downsizing, I have finally passed the “archive” — and all its personal history — on to a new caretaker* (with the hope that someone else will believe they are documents worth saving). The examples here are but a few remnants of of the print artifacts that I have lovingly saved for 66 years. All things must pass, they say, and just maybe this collection will be of use to others.