A HEARTWARMING STORY BY ONE OF OUR OWN!
Amarillo Globe–News column, May 18, 2018, on boot fitting, by Jon Mark Beilue:
This is Jon Mark Beilue, columnist at the Amarillo Globe–News. I wrote a column for Friday, May 18, that is below. It concerns Lynn Hayes, a man from Arizona, who drove more than 700 miles to Canyon, Texas, to have his last pair of boots fitted for him by now retired West Texas A&M professor, Dr. Bud Townsend.
When Townsend was 20 and Hayes was 9, Hayes was fitted for his first pair of boots at Olsen–Stelzer boot company in Henrietta, Texas. In a chance reunion of the two, Hayes wanted his last pair of boots to be fitted by the man who did the first nearly 70 years ago.
Tom Cartlidge, with Olsen–Stelzer in Wichita Falls, gave me these email addresses and asked me to send this column. For those media outlets affected, should you decided to use the column, our policy is standard — simply credit the individual and newspaper. I also have a couple of photos if interested. Thank you.
Elmer Hayes and young son Lynn drove 17 miles from the ranch near Terral, Okla., across the Red River into Texas and the town of Henrietta. It was a red–letter day in November 1949, Lynn’s ninth birthday.
The destination was the renowned Olsen–Stelzer boot store. Eyes were big when he walked in with his dad. For his birthday, he was getting his first pair of custom–made boots, spurs and a Stetson hat. There to meet them was Bud Townsend, 20, the retail sales manager.
“You go in and you could smell the leather and the new boots,” Hayes said. “That store was beautiful. I’m telling you, for a young country boy in the 1940s, that was a big deal.”
Townsend had young Lynn sit down and began the art of fitting his small foot for some birthday boots. He got Hayes’ small foot on some paper, took pencil, traced and measured what he needed. Lynn soaked it all in, and couldn’t help notice what he thought was a glove on Townsend’s left hand.
But soon enough, their work was done. Dad and son got what they needed. Bud shook their hand and everyone went on their merry way. They wouldn’t see each other again, that is, until nearly 70 years later this week when Hayes arrived at Townsend’s home just south of the West Texas A&M campus.
A lot happened to the two since — a whole lot. For as much as Townsend loved boots in general, and Olsen–Stelzer in particular, he got the best thing to come out of that place when he squired and married the attractive bookkeeper, Mary, who would be his wife for the next 67 years. They would have three children.
Townsend was a lover of the rodeo and cowboy way of life. He announced rodeos for more than 50 years. At first he thought he’d be a preacher, even went to Decatur Baptist College, but then decided maybe history, a professor of history, was the way to go. From Midwestern he went to Baylor and then earned his Ph.D at Wisconsin.
Townsend taught history at West Texas State for 27 years where his deep voice and sometimes theatrics made his lectures darn near famous. And if that didn’t make him famous, Bob Wills, the western swing artist, did.
In 1976, he wrote the definitive look at Wills with the book, “San Antonio Rose: The Life and Music of Bob Wills.” Townsend is still getting royalty checks from the book. In 1975, he won a Grammy for his album notes on “For the Last Time,” Wills’ final album with the Texas Playboys.
As for Hayes, he graduated from the University of New Mexico in 1965, got his masters from Central Michigan, and then had four tours of duty in Vietnam as a combat aviator and civil engineer.
In 1989, Hayes was at Fort Huachuca in Arizona, when former President Reagan, about a year out of office, had a fall on horseback across the border in Mexico. Hayes led a team that retrieved Reagan, who had a concussion, and took him to Tucson. As a token of appreciation, the Reagans later invited Hayes and his group to lunch.
Both men settled into retirement — Townsend in the same Canyon home for more than 50 years which might as well be a museum, and Hayes in Sierra Vista, Ariz., that hugs the Mexico border.
Not long ago, Hayes was in the market for the last of 14 pair of boots he’s worn. He was searching online and was shocked to see Olsen–Stelzer boots show up. When he returned to the area in 1990 for his mother’s funeral, he was sad to see the old store’s windows were black and it was closed. But now there was a store in neighboring Wichita Falls.
“You gotta understand, this really ignited my memory,” Hayes said. “That store was it for me.”
Hayes sent a heartfelt email to the store where Tom Cartlidge read it. Hayes described his birthday boots in 1949, what the store meant to him and the helpful clerk who fitted him. Hayes even remembered the clerk had a glove on his hand.
Cartlidge knew instantly he was talking of Townsend, who he’s kept in touch with through the years. Cartlidge’s dad Morris worked for Olsen–Stelzer at about the time Townsend did. Cartlidge called Hayes and said the man he mentioned lived in Canyon.
“When he said he was alive, I couldn’t believe it,” Hayes said. Oh, alive and very well.
Cartlidge, playing a bit of a matchmaker, put the two in touch with each other. Hayes got the idea that wouldn’t it be something if the man who fitted him with his first pair of boots nearly 70 years ago could fit him for his final pair.
“I thought this would be wonderful. If not for my injured hand , I don’t think he would remember me,” said Townsend, 88, who lost three fingers in a chemistry lab explosion in 1943. “I think it would be total joy to be the one to fit his first and last pair.”
So at 3 a.m. Wednesday, Hayes jumped into his white Dodge Ram 2500 for the 793 miles to Canyon. He arrived about 5 p.m. By Thursday morning, he and Cartlidge and his granddaughter Ann were all at Townsend’s home.
When they went upstairs for the ceremonial fitting in a room where Townsend keeps 49 pair of all makers on display, it might as well have been 1949 in Henrietta with the smell of leather in the air. Cartlidge later did the official fitting.
No one thought this silly. Far from it. It was worth every year and every mile.
Jon Mark Beilue is an AGN Media columnist.
Editor: This story came by introduction by Lynn Hayes as a personal note I thought adds all the meaning possible to this story, and which I believe the reader should know after reading the article:
“This was an historical experience for me. In October of 1952 my Dad “Elmer” was going to take me to the Olsen–Stelzer boot company in Henrietta, Texas, for me to order a saddle chest harness for my horse “Shorty,” which was on the was on the way to the Stanfield Ranch that was my Dad’s destination. However, it was becoming late in the day when he started to leave he told me that the store would probably be closed before we got there. So he let me out in town to attend the cowboy movie currently playing. My dad was in an auto accident on the way back home at the Red River bridge resulting 3rd degree burns over 70 percent of his body and died a few days later. it was providence that I didn’t go for I would surly not have survived.”
Photos of Lynn, First and Last Boot–Fitting Photos:
