Jun 21, 2009

Man has business nailed as boot makerBy Cindy Kahler ThomasTimesRecordNews.com

Wichita Falls — The Burk Boot Shop is a really good fit for this Wichita County town.

The shop, owned by Armando and Patricia Dominguez, is a place where customers can get their shoes repaired, buy a gift, have custom-boots made or just stop by for a chat to get to know the couple. After all, they have a story to tell. Both are originally from Mexico.

“In October of 1967, my father moved us form Matamoros, Mexico, to Burkburnett and opened the Burk Shoe Repair,” Armando said.

The family of five lived in a one-room apartment that was the back of the shop.

“After a year, my mom threatened my father, and they bought a house,” he said.

But moving to the house didn’t keep Armando out of the shop.

“I grew up in this shop. I started out sweeping the floors and hand stitching penny loafers. I caught on pretty fast,” he said. “I must have sewn hundreds of penny loafers.”

By the time he graduated high school, he thought that repairing shoes was the last thing he wanted to do, so he took a job that involved labor, “but it didn’t last but a couple of months.” He even went to Midwestern State University for a while, but felt he didn’t fit in.

“But I knew how to repair shoes, so I took a job in Wichita Falls. I was making more money there. He paid me more than my dad did, and I was making enough money to buy a car,” he said.

Armando met his future wife in 1988 in Mexico at his cousin’s wedding; and after two years of long-distance dating, they married. History repeated itself as the honeymooners lived in a large apartment attached to their shoe repair business in Wichita Falls.

Read complete article.