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'Oh, How Nice' Shoe Repair Keeps Pop's Memory Alive

By BARBARA METZLER COURT HOUSE - First you take the heel off, then cut a new heel. Cement it, nail it, nibble it, buff it, smooth it. The step-by-step rocess sounds relatively simple, ut when Imojene Coldwell gets a pair of shoes in her hands, she turns those simple steps into an art, 'Tve got shoe polish in my blood,” said Coldwell, as she cemented a pair of heels onto corduroy scuffs. That may be more than a figure of speech for the 50-year-old woman who started shining shoes at the age of seven, under the careful guidance of her father, Charles Young, who gave 62 years of his life to the shoe repair business before his death in 1982. “At 13 I started training," Coldwell continued. "First 1 would just pull off heels. Then 1 learned to put on the good heels, and how to build up the heels that were worn down.” EVERY ONE OF Charles and Ida Young’s six children had to put time in at the store after

school. “Pop believed in the family unit,” his fourth child explained. Charles Young learned the importance of passing on the family trade from his father, a former shoe factory worker from AlsaceLorraine, France. When the senior Young immigrated to the U.S., he began work as a shoe repairman. It was his shop that Charles and Ida Young took over when they were married in 1922. After her father’s death, Coldwell felt called to return to Cape May Court House and work at keeping the shop alive. At that time, she and her husband, George, were living in Plattsburgh, N.Y., where Coldwell worked with the Red Cross. WHILE HER FATHER was ill, Coldwell visited the hospital three times a day to feed him, because he would not eat for the nurses, and then returned to work at the shop Now, she and her mother, 79-year-old Ida Young, keep the shoe repair business flourishing (Page 18 Pleasei

Special Section of the Herald and Lantern June 8, 1983