Newtowner’s Collection Carries

The Torch For Lake Placid Olympics

By Jan Howard

The C.H. Booth Library is celebrating the Olympics.

A display featuring Lake Placid Olympics memorabilia that could rival that of the Olympic community’s museum is being featured in various areas of the C.H. Booth Library during September.

Tom Spiro of Newtown has been collecting all types of items related to the Lake Placid Olympics for 12 years. It all started because his father, Chris Spiro, runs baseball card shows. It was during one of his shows that Mr Spiro purchased his first Olympics-related piece, a pin.

“My Dad had it in one of his displays. That’s pretty much where it started,” Mr Spiro said of his collection that now numbers in thousands of items.

Every year Mr Spiro and his father attend the annual convention of the Olympic Collectors Club in Lake Placid where he has the opportunity to add to his collection.

The club has 700 members from all over the world, Mr Spiro said. The convention features a golf tournament, dinner, and an auction for Save the Children that last year raised over $20,000.

The exact number of items in his collection is too large to guess. In fact, the president of the Lake Placid Olympic Museum requested an inventory, and after seeing only a partial inventory, Mr Spiro reports that the president said, “I can’t imagine what’s out there that you don’t have.”

Mr Spiro noted there are about 15 four-inch binders full of items that have not as yet been inventoried.

Chris Spiro said his son’s collection is probably the largest and finest collection of the Lake Placid Olympics in the country at the present time. Included in his collection, but not on display at the library, are five banners in each of the Olympic colors that were displayed in Lake Placid.

Mr Spiro said Lake Placid doesn’t even have a full set of banners, according to its mayor. Mr Spiro also has a banner for ABC, which broadcast the Olympics.

Only a small part of Mr Spiro’s entire collection is on exhibit at the library, but various items are featured on all three floors in display cases, including the children’s library. Olympic uniforms are displayed to the left of the main circulation desk on the second floor.

The collection includes hats, scarves, suspenders, glassware, plates, posters, post cards, cups, buttons, pins, stamps and covers, coins, medals, books, medallions, and magazines.

 In addition to vendors and collectors at the annual convention, Mr Spiro has obtained Olympic items through dealers from throughout the country, such as a German coat he purchased from a dealer in California. He also has purchased items through eBay’s online auctions.

Mr Spiro has had the opportunity in the past to meet two winners of gold medals, Hilary Smart, who won a medal with his father for sailing in 1948, and Jack Shea, who won the first United States speed skating medal in the 1932 Olympics.

One of his choice items is an autographed photograph of Jim Craig, the United States goalie at the 1980 Olympics in Lake Placid, which Mr Spiro said has been called “the number one sports moment of the century.”