A Blacksburg institution is gone.
Retired cobbler and avid league bowler Harley Helms died Saturday at home. He was 86.
Born deaf, Helms never learned to read or write but worked as a cobbler in the New River Valley for seven decades, until he was put out of his downtown Blacksburg shop in 2008. His landlords rented the space to a Verizon wireless store.
Before it closed, Harley’s Shoe Repair functioned as an old-time community center, where workers and cops stopped for a cup of coffee and a chat. It might also have been called the unofficial town museum, given Helms’ affection for old photos and nick-knacks that chronicled some of Blacksburg’s history.
An avid hunter, fisherman and horseman in his youth, Helms seemed much younger than his 86 years. At the time of his death, he bowled in five leagues.
Helms’ father, Howard, tried to send his only son to the school for the deaf in Staunton. But the boy cried so hard at the thought of being left behind, his dad brought him back home and apprenticed him to Giles County cobbler Frank Mutter in the 1930s.
The Mutter brothers were well-known cobblers, who ran shops in Pearisburg and Blacksburg.
In October, Warner Baker reopened a shoe shop in the old Mutter location in Pearisburg, near the historic courthouse. Today Old Towne Shoe Repair is not only a business, it is a living memorial to the men who plied the cobbler trade. There Baker fixes and polishes shoes using some of Helms’ old equipment.
Original Story:
http://www.roanoke.com/news/nrv/breaking/wb/235849
DHHSC’s Note:
Harley Helms’s name was mentioned in Roanoke Times:
http://www.roanoke.com/news/nrv/3counties/wb/223116
http://www.roanoke.com/news/nrv/sports/wb/216872
Harley’s Obituary:
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/roanoke/obituary.aspx?n=harley-edgar-helms&pid=139523584
- Thanks to Roanoke Times and GD
