Legionnaire boasts expansive collection of Legion medals
An Army veteran and New York Legionnaire has an unrivaled collection of American Legion national convention medals. Steve Leader, who attends graduate school in San Diego using the Post-9/11 GI Bill, is a member of Post 873 in Newfane, N.Y., where his father, Paul, is post commander. Since 2005, he has collected official medals and other memorabilia from every national convention, from 1919 to 2014. Leader started the project with his father on his mind, as “something I could do to learn about him and the Legion.”
Leader collects official convention medals, pins, badges and other decorations that belonged to delegates and distinguished guests, as well as Auxiliary and Sons items. He finds them at garage sales, flea markets and eBay, and trades with other collectors. More difficult to find are wartime medals made of papier-mâché, few of which have survived the decades. Multiples of an item aren’t a problem, Leader says; someone else is bound to want the extras in return for something he doesn’t have. His goal is to upgrade them all to the Distinguished Guest level.
Some of Leader’s collection has quite a pedigree, including items from the estate of American Legion awardee Bowie Kuhn, a former Major League Baseball commissioner. He also has Distinguished Guest medals and other items from Past National Commander Michael Kogutek, a New York native who died in 2012 – though not his personal medal from 1981, the convention over which Kogutek presided as national commander.
Although Leader has personally attended just one national convention (meeting his father in Reno in 2007 as a Sons member), he enjoys researching them, especially the participants; to him, it’s about “the history behind the convention ... the people who went there, trying to help veterans.” He won’t consider his collection complete until he has a Distinguished Guest item from every convention – and even then, there’s his ongoing state collection (for which he’s trying to document all the convention medals from every state since 1919), gold collection (10k and 14k pins and medals) and more.
Leader says he’s thinking about trying to display his collection at a national convention, perhaps closer to the Legion’s centennial celebration starting in 2018; until then, his national convention medals collection is available for viewing online.