The bootmaker
Don was born in western Nebraska, where his grandfather had homesteaded. He grew up in Nebraska, upstate New York, and central Kentucky, where he went to high school at Annville Institute and graduated as valedictorian. He joined the army in 1972, and was trained as a nurse. He worked on an orthopedic ward, mainly with amputees returning from Vietnam, and later ran the emergency room at Dugway Proving Grounds nights and weekends, when there were doctors on call, but not in the hospital. He enjoyed the challenges of these assignments, and might have stayed in the service - but his last assignment was on a hepatitis ward in Germany, where he was basically a babysitter, and his requests for transfer were denied.
After leaving the service, Don was briefly a farrier, but soon found that he was too tall to be comrfortable bent double under horses all day. For many years he drove truck, but didn't like being away from home so much. When he sold his truck, he had exactly enough money to buy a shoe and boot repair business. He had always been good with his hands, and liked working with old machinery. Before long he decided he wanted to learn to make boots. His teacher, master bootmaker Randy Merrill (the original designer of Merrill hiking boots), told Don he had talent, and has become a friend as well as mentor. After a few years of renting a shop on Mt. Pleasant's Main Street, we built a shop for Don on our property near Spring City.
Don enjoys hunting (especially pheasant and elk hunting), helping our son Philip with his stock car, and fishing (especially salmon fishing in British Columbia). He is one of the better bowlers in our county's men's league, and has recently taken up golf. Two fused vertebrae (one in his back and one in his neck) make riding more difficult for him, but he still occasionally rides his palomino mare Sally in local parades or out on the trail. The flag boots were a pair he made to wear on the Fourth of July 2003, while Philip was in Iraq with the National Guard. They were also a sort of journeyman project, as they are made differently than most modern boots - like boots of the 1800's, in two main pieces (front & back).
