Leon Snyder, a former president of ACA International who founded Credit Adjustment Bureau of Baltimore, passed away on Nov. 25. He was 95.
Snyder, who worked until he was 82 according to an obituary, founded the agency out of his home in 1958 with his wife, Beatrice, after spending time in the Army during World War II as an investigator and then working in finance and collections.
“He founded it with my mother on the dining room table of our home on Pembridge Avenue,” said Snyder’s son, Dr. Richard H. Snyder, chair of internal medicine at the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta. “He didn’t talk about his business much. He serious and worked long hours. It was his life. My mom worked alongside him and ran the office. They were a great pair.”
Not content with just running his own business, Leon Snyder also spent 24 years on the Collection Agency Licensing Board in Maryland and worked on the creation of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and the Maryland Collection Agency Licensing Law. He was president of ACA International and chairman of the association’s education council.
Leon Snyder may never have ended up as an investigator or in collections had one of his commanding officers in the Army not learned that Snyder could type. The commander, who took Snyder out on a call one day, was impressed with him and sent him to investigator’s school, according to Snyder’s son.
“My father was a natural investigator and kept up his license throughout most of his life,” said Dr. Richard Snyder. “As part of his business he would meet people at their homes. He called them credit adjustment calls. He asked the right questions, had an empathy for his clients and tried to get to the bottom of things.”
Beatrice Snyder passed away in 2011. Leon Snyder is survived by his son, four grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren. A daughter, Elaine Abendroth, passed away in 2001.
