John Barbour; reporter also penned two books

May 10, 2004|Associated Press

OAKMONT, Pa. -- John A. Barbour, a longtime AP NewsFeatures writer who covered the nation's first manned space expeditions, died yesterday at a nursing home of complications from a stroke, his family said. He was 75.

Mr. Barbour spent more than 43 years with the Associated Press, first in Michigan and later at the company's headquarters in New York City.

He covered some of the nation's earliest manned space missions, from the flight that made Alan Shepard the first American to enter space in 1961 to the near-disastrous Apollo 13 mission in 1970.

Mr. Barbour worked on several AP books and is the author of "Footprints on the Moon," a 1969 book chronicling the Apollo 11 space mission.

He also wrote "In the Wake of the Whale," about the endangered blue whale.

He retired in 1996.

Mr. Barbour's children said he was a humble man who made friends and newspaper contacts with equal ease.

"I just remember when he was working in Manhattan, he would go anywhere and the city would just open up and embrace him," said his son, John Jr.

"He had a friend on every street, it seemed."

Mr. Barbour, who was born Dec. 31, 1928, in Ann Arbor, Mich., had lived at The Willows nursing home in Oakmont for the past two years.