Photo by Greg Vore

When we first heard of him two years ago, he caught our attention with the choice he made at a young age:

Architect Mark Leininger credits his parents for choosing travel to China, Antigua, Colombia and other foreign destinations over material things throughout his childhood, instilling a love that has endured. Case in point: He remembers asking his mother for a pool table in third grade.

“Do you want a pool table or a trip to Jamaica?” she replied. He wisely opted for the travel, collecting the airline timetables that used to pile up at airport ticket counters in the pre-Internet era.

Back then, Leininger also constructed model airports and airplanes at home. Now he designs actual airports as associate director of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, including Boston Logan’s international terminal. But he’s still a superfan, happily collecting aviation industry books in many languages wherever he travels around the world and attending collectors’ conferences when he can.

He is consistent. We believe him. The text from the image above in this month’s issue of one of the great travel junkie glossy news outlets:

I began collecting travel ephemera when I was seven or eight. In the ’60s and ’70s, when other kids I knew were being packed into the back of a car, my parents were taking us all over the world. I grew up in Cincinnati in a modest house, but we went everywhere: to Western and Eastern Europe (Russia in 1979!), to Colombia in ’81, to China in ’83. Clearly my folks felt travel was the best form of education. Our trips were so magical that any tokens associated with them became valued mementos, like these colorful luggage tags I saved from those years. Their mod graphics, especially those from defunct airlines, are lovely reminders of how much more stylish travel was in those decades.—Mark Leininger, architect

See this on Conde Nast Traveler’s website.