carried 96 covers, one with a "flown-to-the-Moon" theme, eight with an Apollo 15 design, and 87 covers honoring Apollo 12, carried as a favor for Barbara Gordon, wife of Apollo 12 astronaut Dick Gordon. Barbara Gordon, a stamp collector, had wanted her husband to take the covers on his lunar mission, but he had refused. The flown-to-the-moon cover was a favor for a friend of Dick Gordon. Apollo 15 carried the cover from the Postal Service to be canceled on the surface of the Moon. The agency also sent a backup, stowed in the Command Module with another cancellation device, for use on the homeward journey if Scott did not get to postmark the lunar cover. All covers except the group of 400 had been approved by Slayton, who stated in his testimony that he would almost certainly have approved them if asked (assuming their weight could be negotiated with the Flight Manager), on condition that they stay in the Command Module and not go to the lunar surface. In July 1972, after the story broke, William Hines of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote that "the idea that this complicated caper could have been carried out without the knowledge and at least tacit permission of Slayton is regarded by people familiar with NASA as ludicrous. Slayton's tight rein over his sometimes fractious charges is legendary". The crew bought several hundred of the ten-cent First Man on the Moon postage stamp issue. These were affixed to the lightweight envelopes by secretaries in the Astronaut Office. Collins had made arrangements for the KSC post office to open at 1:00 am EDT on launch day—opening this facility so early on an Apollo launch morning was not unusual—and brought several hundred of the stamped covers. Once the envelopes had been run through the cancellation machine, he took them to the astronaut quarters, where members of the Flight Crew Support Team vacuum sealed them in Teflon-covered fiberglass to fireproof them for space. Normally, if the Flight Crew Support Team found that an item was not on an astronaut's PPK list, they would add it, and make sure it was approved, but team leader James L. Smotherman stated that he "goofed", explaining that he had confused the 400 covers with the Herrick envelopes, which had been approved by Slayton. Since the 400 covers had not been approved by Slayton, they were considered unauthorized. Scott stated, "I never