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1980 Orlando Sentinel Article "Shoe shop laced in memories"
Collection
The William Gladden Sr. Collection
Format
Original newspaper clipping
Date
1980-05-29
Historical Background
A feature article published on May 29th, 1980, in the Sentinel Star (now known as the Orlando Sentinel) by columnist Dick Burdette. The article focuses on William Gladden Sr. and his decades-old shoe repair shop in Apopka, Florida. This article was written when Gladden was 77 and had been repairing shoes for 54 years. Burdette traces Gladden's career from his training at Georgia State College in Savannah, through the Depression years when he kept the shop open until midnight on Saturdays, to the small indignities of a $15 naming tax that forced him to rename his beloved 'Apopka Shoe Hospital' to 'Gladden's Shoe Shop.'
William Gladden Sr. was born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1903. William attended Georgia Institute of Technology to learn to become a shoe cobbler, which housed a trade school for African Americans in the early half of the 20th century. William returned to Apopka to open his Shoe Hospital on 9th Street in the mid 1920s. William Gladden Sr. operated his business for more than half a century. In addition to his business, he worked as a driver for Orange County School Transportation.
Location
Apopka, Florida, United States of America.
People
William Gladden Sr.; William Gladden; Bill Gladden
