Reenactor Spotlight: Conwells passing leadership roles to a new generation

Leslie and Rick share a moment during their duties at the Feast of the Hunter's Moon.

Rick and Leslie lead participants at the Feast of the Hunter's Moon.

As Rick and Leslie Martin Conwell move into retirement and pass on their leadership roles to a younger generation, they're ready for a new stage of their life together.

"We've been really, really blessed," Leslie said. "The best part is seeing it come full circle."

Leslie said she's been involved in living history events for 50 years.

She was 14 when her mother started working for the Tippecanoe County Historical Association, and staff members recognized and nurtured Leslie's interest and talent.

"At a critical point in my life, adults paid attention to me," she said. "Feast participants mentored me."

Leslie said she and Rick have been able to return that favor and pass along their knowledge to the next generation.

"It makes me super proud to see those young people step into leadership roles," she said. "How exciting is it to have watched them grow and know that they will go farther than you did. I don't know of a better thing than that.

"You give them a little bit of a gentle push on the journey," she said. "And then you hand them the oars and off they go."

The latest example of their mentoring has been moving through the last phases of their leadership role at Kalamazoo Living History Show, Kalamazoo, Mich., which takes place each March. They will officially turn over show operations to a new generation at the end of the year, but new owners Ethan and Paisley Yazel will be handling the paperwork this fall for the 2026 show while Rick and Leslie act as "resource people" as needed.

"It’s a wonderful relationship," Leslie said. "We're here to support them until they're ready to begin 2026."

The Conwells started running the Kalamazoo show in 2007.

"Doing the Kalamazoo show together has been a highlight of our relationship," Rick said. "It's been a great thing for us personally and professionally, and has been enjoyable work."

"It's not just a job. Vendors depend on us," Leslie said. "We work hard because (the show) can vastly affect people's income. We just have always taken that very seriously."

When the show had to be canceled in 2020 and 2021, they worked to get it going again in 2022 and the last few years.

"We worried about things in the first year back," Leslie said. "Attendance dipped just a bit, but not a lot. Not as much as we were concerned about."

This year, the show was back to normal.

"We just had a really strong Kalamazoo," she said. "We're really happy about that."

Over the last few years, the Conwells said they started to talk to Ethan and Paisley to gauge their interest in taking over the show.

"We'd known Ethan since he was 8, I think," Leslie said. "We recognize talent when we see it. He's got everything, and so does Paisley. Ethics, integrity, knowledge, social media skills. They're quite the powerhouse couple."

Since the young couple has been involved, Leslie said their ideas have drawn more young people to the show.

"More young vendors have taken the place of some of those who are no longer active," she said.

It's a great mix because there are also a couple of vendors who have been at the show since the very beginning.

It was downtime of 2020 when Rick and Leslie took stock of their lives and decided to start making some changes.

"During Covid we realized life is short," Leslie said. "I had recently finished cancer treatment, and he's seven years older, so that's when we started making retirement plans. We knew we wanted more time to spend together.

"We made it a priority to look for younger people that have what we were looking for to carry things forward," she said.

In July 2021, Rick retired as Tippecanoe Battlefield Museum Manager after grooming his successor, Trey Gorden.

Rick served in that role for 10 years.

"I had a little more than a year to get ready for the bicentennial battle, which was the high point of my time there," he said. "That location is very meaningful to a lot of people.

"I learned to be a military history expert kind of from scratch," he said. "I still go in and fill in when somebody's sick or on vacation or needs a day off."

In December 2022, Leslie retired as executive director of the Tippecanoe County Historical Society, and in December 2023 as manager of Feast of the Hunter's Moon.

In previous years, Leslie was on the Feast staff from 1978-2001 before returning in 2009. She also served as museum and archives director for the National Muzzle Loading Rifle Association from 2004-2015.

"The (Tippecanoe) board very wisely knew my successor would need to train with me for a while," Leslie said. "Brook (Sauter) was my pick to take over the Feast. She's a very talented person.

"I can't overstate how exciting it is to watch young people take over," she said. "Institutional knowledge is really huge at both of those events. They're respectful, and they walk the tight rope of bringing fresh new ideas and having respect for the past."

They've been married since 2009, but Rick and Leslie remember their first meeting at Feast of the Hunter's Moon.

She was 15 and he was 22.

"We both remember that meeting," Leslie said. "We each made quite the impression on the other."

But Rick was a young man and moved out west to live for 30 years before they met again in 1998.

"It seems that once we joined our forces we could accomplish a lot more and make things better for people that we served," Leslie said.

"And it helps that we like each other's company," Rick added.

"We always think we are better together than as individuals. We accomplish more like that," Leslie said. "That's kind of what we've always done for as long as we've been together."

They have achieved a lot in life, but of course, running events also comes with challenges.

Leslie said she still can't make it stop raining.

"People have become used to creature comforts," she said. "So the weather was always been my nemesis.

"I really want to write a book with the really good stories to be published when I die," she said. "I've seen a lot, and I have some really good stories I can't tell while I'm still alive."

In retirement, the couple plans to do some traveling and spend more time with their family.

They have a 12-acre property to take care of, and they grow much of the food they eat in their garden.

A more recent addition to the list of activities has been cheese-making.

"There are new interests coming down the pike all the time," Rick said.

They plan to attend events to "be with our rendezvous and living history family in a more relaxed way," Leslie said.

One of the things that bothered her over the years was being so busy dealing with "things" at events that should couldn't spend time with the people they love and care for.

"I've always had to run the next fire," she said. "I'm really looking forward to spending time with friends."