For 83 years, he kept his customers in step

After 83 years repairing shoes, since he was recruited off a Camden sidewalk at age 11, James Spinelli, 94, is retiring this month and closing Quaker Shoe Repair in Haddonfield.

Only he's not sure he can stay retired.

He believed all these decades that he was living a useful life, saving soles, but little noticed by the world. He is a shoe man who kept to his shop, literally living upstairs.

But the outpouring of love from customers since he announced his retirement has been so surprising to him, so gratifying, that he's not certain he can walk away. Who will take care of his customers?

Jen Volin of Cherry Hill came in last week to pick up her husband's black dress shoes.

"What will we do now?" she asked Spinelli, his fingernails framed in black from a lifetime of labor, leather, glue, and polish.

"I don't know," he replied.

He planned to close his door and sell his small brick building on Tanner Street, built 200 years ago and showing its age. But lately he's been trying to find another cobbler.

"There aren't many of us left," he said to Volin.

James Spinelli was born poor in Camden, and says he started selling vegetables from a wagon at age 5.

One day, as he was walking past, a man came out of a shoe repair shop and said he needed a boy.

"I just took to it," Spinelli says.

By age 20, he had opened his own shop in Westmont.

He married. When his son and daughter were 3 and 1, his wife died of ovarian cancer. It was 1945. He was 25.

He fought depression by focusing on his shoes and his children.

He remarried, and became a devoted father to five.  In 1952, he moved his business to Haddonfield, and a decade later, the marriage over, he moved in above his shop. He has continued to work seven days a week.

"I'm a shoe servant for these people to keep them comfortable and walking," he said. "I never considered myself a businessman."

He has fixed exponentially more black shoes than brown. He has repaired far more women's shoes than men's - but men, he says, bring back the same pair five, six, even seven times, refusing to surrender.

About seven years ago, a woman walked in and looked at all the photographs of his children.

"I'm tired of eating alone," she told him.

"I eat alone too," he said. "Let me have your phone number. I'll call."

For seven years, they have been together. He describes the relationship as more like father and daughter. Judith Smith is 70, a widow, and has her own issues with aging. In many ways, he looks after her. He does the cooking.

As recently as last winter, Spinelli insisted he had no plans to retire. But shoes don't last forever and neither will he.

"I'm beginning to tire differently from my usual tiring," he says. "I don't have that second breath."

His two sons, Albert and James, who remain close - Albert has worked with him part time - have been encouraging their father for years to retire, and finally, noting his fatigue, he consented.

The machines of his trade, the sander and trimmer and nailer, all nearly as old as he is, are to be picked up Friday  by a New York company that will use them for spare parts.

Spinelli will stay open 10 more days so customers can pick up remaining shoes.

The world has been stopping by these last few weeks to thank him, say farewell.

"You are a genius with leather," Fran Coughlin, a customer, wrote in a notebook full of tributes on his counter.

"We called you 'The Magician' since there was nothing you couldn't fix," Lola Riggs of Haddonfield wrote in a card. "It will be difficult to fill your shoes."

The mayor issued a proclamation, declaring James Spinelli Day. They gave him a cake shaped like an old shoe box.

"I've had a very narrow life," he says, "but a very good life, a life that was perfect for me."

What has life taught him?

"To train yourself into contentment and accept all that happens."

If he's giving retirement a second thought, his sons are holding him to it. Once the machines are gone, there's no turning back.

He will go to Hawaii in October to visit a daughter, and then return. Smith owns a condo nearby and they will live there.

If he stays retired, he hopes to visit retirement homes and share his exercise routine, sit-ups and leg lifts, which has helped him stay fit and work so long.

Whenever death comes, he says, he will be ready. "I may welcome the long sleep."

215-854-5639

@MichaelVitez