Presidential collection missing only one signature

Saturday, June 26, 2010 05:36 AM EDT

By Travis Snyder

Reagan signature completes collection

Tuesday, July 20, 2010 12:00 AM EDT

By Travis Snyder

tsnyder@suncommercial.com

The Vincennes Historical and Antiquarian Society's collection of presidential signatures is complete - for now.

"We have wholeness now, at least until the next president," Dennis Latta, a society member, said with a laugh.

"Then, we're in trouble. Either two years from now or six years from now, we have to do something. We have to act."

What had been missing from the collection was an authentic signature by Ronald Reagan. Latta was contacted this month by Nancy Vaccaro of N.J., and her husband, David Vaccaro, who has collected authentic Reagan signatures for more than 10 years.

Nancy Vaccaro learned about the society's collection from her sister-in-law, Jill Harrison, an appraiser from Lincoln, Mass., after Harrison read about the collection online.

"In his study, he has become proficient at identifying authentic Reagan signatures," Nancy Vaccaro said of her husband. Many signature sellers and autograph auction houses have to be able to identify thousands of signers and can mistake a signature made by a secretary, for example, as authentic."

The Vaccaros have several of the items they have collected for sale on their website, Reagancollector.com.

"It's interesting how specialized somebody can be," Latta said. "(David Vaccaro), you would think he would be involved in presidential signatures, but he is a Reagan signature person. He is an expert of experts on Reagan signatures."

The couple agreed to donate an Inauguration Day postcard with the signatures of and a portrait of Ronald and Nancy Reagan dated Jan. 20, 1981, thus completing the society's mission.

The collection began as a hobby of Judge Curtis Shake, a Knox County resident who was an Indiana Supreme Court justice who served as a judge during the Nuremberg Trials in Germany after World War II.

Shake's collection began when he received a personal letter in 1930 from President Herbert Hoover, commending him for his role in a Vincennes celebration of the 100th anniversary of the migration of Abraham Lincoln's family from Indiana and Illinois.

Shake later received personal correspondence from Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman and Dwight Eisenhower.

Shake traded for and purchased the rest of the original signatures for 40 years, getting every signature up to and including Richard Nixon's. One of the documents had both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson's autographs.

In 1973, Shake donated his collection, which included personal letters, land purchase documents and letters of appointment, to the society.

Since then, the society members have continued the effort. After receiving Barack Obama's signature late last year, they were only missing Reagan's signature before the Vaccaros came through for them.

Latta said the final piece of the collection completed decades of work by Shake and the Historical and Antiquarian Society.

"I would say it's a culmination of almost 80 years of work," Latta said. It was a tremendous amount of effort by Judge Shake and the Historical Society, beginning in 1973 when they received the collection. Generations of people have worked on this. How it all came together is an unusual story"

The collection was originally held at the Lewis Library at Vincennes University but was later moved to a bank vault after society members became concerned about the rising value of the signatures.

A copy of the display can be seen today at Tecumseh-Harrison Elementary School.