Legendary NBC reporter Jay Barbree passed away today at the age of 87 in Florida.

Barbree is the only journalist to have covered every non-commercial human space mission in the United States, beginning with the first American in space, Alan Shepard aboard Freedom 7 in 1961. Barbree continued his coverages all the way to the last mission of the space shuttle, Atlantis’s STS-135 mission in July 2011. Barbree was present for all 135 space shuttle launches, and every manned launch for the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo eras. In total, Barbree witnessed 166 human space launches. He also covered live the Challenger explosion and the breakup on re-entry of Columbia.

Barbree grew up on his family’s farm in Early County, Georgia, and entered the United States Air Force in 1950. Following his service in the military, Barbree began his broadcast journalism career at WALB in Albany, Georgia. In 1957, he saw Sputnik’s spent booster rocket orbiting in the sky and then wrote radio and television reports about the Soviet Union’s launch of the first artificial satellite.

Barbree is the author of several books focusing on NASA’s efforts and outer space, as well as two memoirs: The Day I Died: One Man’s Successful Battle Back from the Dead, which recounts an episode in his life when he dropped dead while running on the beach and was revived by medics, and Live from Cape Canaveral: Covering the Space Race, from Sputnik to Today, which focuses on his career as a reporter.

Barbree won numerous awards for his reporting including an Emmy Award for his coverage of the Apollo Moon landings.

Barbree also collaborated with Martin Caidin on a number of non-fiction works, such as Destination Mars: In Art, Myth and Science and A Journey Through Time: Exploring the Universe with the Hubble Space Telescope. Barbree also wrote the novelization of “Pilot Error”, an episode of The Six Million Dollar Man, a television series based upon Caidin’s novel Cyborg.

Over the years, Barbree has stated that he has stayed away from sensationalizing the space program, or those associated with it, and commented that he would not put some items that could be considered harmful into his books.

He retired in 2017 at age 83, and remained busy working for Discovery Channel, National Geographic and the American Spaceflights website.

Barbree was married since 1960 to the former Jo Reisinger, whom he met while covering her participation in Florida beauty pageants. They resided in Merritt Island and have three children, Steve, Alicia, and Karla.

Barbree was also the uncle of 105.7 News Director Scott Humphrey in Crossville.

“Uncle Jay set the bar high for journalist with his style of coverage and reporting stories related to NASA,” said Humphrey. “He brought so much energy to his craft. He was just as much an amazing man away from reporting as he was a journalist. Our family will dearly miss him.”