Generosity Of The Aggie Spirit

Update: On April 12, 2019, Jonas Lossner '20 received his own Aggie Ring, surrounded by friends, family including his brother, Sebastian, and Aggie mentors; he expressed his gratitude to them and said, “None of this would have been possible without Turney Leonard sacrificing his life to liberate Germany,” reported The Bryan-College Station Eagle. Read the story here.

By Sue Owen '94

The Aggie Ring of a World War II hero returned to Texas A&M fifteen years ago through the efforts of a German Army officer. 

Today, that officer’s son received his own Aggie Ring -- surrounded by a network of Aggies who helped bring him to A&M and buy his Ring.

Sebastian Lossner ’16 said, “So many coincidences and a lot of selfless behavior led to me being here.”

A senior accounting major working on both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in a five-year program, Sebastian said that the story of Medal of Honor recipient Turney Leonard ’42 is often in his mind.

“Whenever I need to get a bit of a reminder, I go to the Corps of Cadets museum, look at the display -- the Ring, the Medal of Honor, the story -- and it just helps me to stay humble, I guess,” he said. “I sometimes take friends there to show them that as well, so they can understand what drives me in the things I do.”

Sebastian Lossner ’16 (in tan jacket) with his brother Jonas and parents Volker and Christa.

Leonard received the medal for heroic leadership in the Battle of the Huertgen Forest, but it was awarded long before his body was even found; his injuries included having his left arm nearly severed. Among his last known acts was asking a fellow soldier to remove the Aggie Ring from his left hand and put it on his right.

Click here to read Leonard’s story. 

Two years later, in 1946, a German teenager found the Ring. Not knowing what to do with it, he put it away for safekeeping until decades later when he discussed the battle with his daughter’s husband, a lieutenant named Volker Lossner, and showed him the Ring. Volker, now a retired captain, said, “I realized that it might be a ring from a U.S. war college,” and was surprised to find a name was legible inside. He began a search that soon connected him to Texas A&M officials and was asked to travel to College Station. On Veterans Day 2000, he presented the Ring to the Leonard family, who in turn gave it and the medal to A&M.

Click here to read 2000 coverage of the Ring’s return.

That could easily have been the end of the story, Volker said, except for the connections he made with the Aggies who welcomed him so warmly. “The hospitality was unbelievable,” he said, and his observation was that this was also how Aggies treated each other. “This was when I fell in love with the Aggie family.”

The coming years saw visits back and forth, including a group of A&M former students visiting the Lossners in Kommerscheidt, Germany, in 2004 and the Lossner family coming to Texas in 2007.

During that trip, Volker said, Aggies first asked if 14-year-old Sebastian might like to attend A&M. When he and Sebastian visited again in 2011, Aggies again were goodnaturedly working on “brainwashing” the young man, but Volker recalled with laughter that Sebastian was already sold on the idea, saying, “What are they doing? I’m convinced!” Volker said, “I think it’s the Spirit of Aggieland. The same way it amazed me, I think it amazed him.”

At Sebastian's Ring Day, left to right: Linda Goodwin, Jim Nelson '49, Eddie Mattei Nelson, Sebastian Lossner '16, Christa Lossner, Volker Lossner and Sallye Henderson.  

Aggies helped pay for Sebastian to come to A&M and are now doing the same for his brother, Jonas, who moved to College Station in August to start at Blinn College with plans to transfer to A&M and study petroleum engineering.

A group of 11 Aggie families and individuals chipped in to buy Sebastian’s Aggie Ring, which he received Friday, Sept. 25, 2015, with family in attendance including both parents, Volker and Christa.

“I’m glad my brother’s here; I’m very happy my parents have the chance to see this,” Sebastian said. “The cycle closes somehow, but not really, because it’s just one chapter. My brother is the next chapter; what I’ll be doing to return the gratefulness will be another chapter. So it’s an ongoing story, I think.”

Sebastian said he wants to use the privilege he’s been granted “to support others and pass forward these opportunities.” He said he tries to help others in small things now, as simply as doing favors when he is asked, and “in the future at some point, I am very much interested in giving someone the opportunity to study at A&M that has a less fortunate background. How exactly that’s going to happen, I don’t know, but hopefully as soon as possible.”

Coming in as a freshman himself, he had some knowledge about A&M and its traditions, but “I didn’t really know the student side,” he said. “Fish Camp was overwhelming, a little bit, but it was definitely a perfect start to it, because you learn so much and you meet so many people.”

He jumped in, joining a freshman leadership organization called PREP and later becoming a peer leader who helped mentor fellow business students. “There are so many opportunities to get involved,” he said, more so than in German universities, which focus less on student organizations. He plays intramural soccer and, as a junior, he served as president of the Aggie Men's Alliance, a leadership, service and social organization.

Aggies whom his parents had met and stayed in contact with “took care of me when I was a little freshman. And they still take care of me,” he said. “It felt like I found a new family. I received so much support; I consider some of them my American parents.”

While earning his bachelor’s in accounting and master’s in marketing through the Professional Program in the Mays School of Business, he is working this semester as an assistant accountant in a position at A&M. He will intern in the summer for a “Big Four” accounting firm and hopes to go into management consulting after he graduates in May 2017.

Volker said having two sons overseas would be tougher on them if it weren’t for the Internet. Once, if family members were away for a long time, when you saw them after a long absence they had changed a lot, he said. “But now that’s not such a problem, if you can see him every week.”

Both Sebastian and his father have honored the Leonard family at recent events connected with an exhibit at the Bastogne War Museum in Belgium that tells the story of World War II through the lives of five Aggies, including Leonard.

Volker represented the Leonard family at the exhibit’s December 2014 opening in Belgium, and Sebastian did the same at a Texas A&M campus event celebrating the exhibit.

Visit tx.ag/bastogne to read about the Bastogne exhibit.

Sebastian said, “Getting my Aggie Ring is a big deal even without the story, but with the story it just gets so much more meaning. It shows that basically the legacy of Turney W. Leonard is living on and will be living on forever.”

The Lossners’ home, where both boys grew up, is still at the edge of the Huertgen Forest -- about 500 yards from the place where Leonard fell and his Ring was found.

With both his sons in Aggieland now, Volker tells this story with a smile:

“We have a small house and a garden, and when I came back from bringing back the Ring, there were two little boys playing in the garden. One was 8 years old, and the other one was 4 years old. And they were playing soccer and climbing on trees and so on. Nowadays, when I look out in my garden, I only see the flagpole. It’s a Texas A&M flag. The flag is flying 365 days a year.”