(Feb. 16, 2017) When 86-year-old Jesse Turner closes the Berlin Shoe Box next month, it will not only be the end of a 68-year career, but also the end of an era.
More than a mere cobbler, Turner is a U.S. Army veteran and the longtime organizer of the Old Fashioned Memorial Day Parade in Berlin as well as a past master of the Masonic Lodge, past president of the Berlin Chamber of Commerce and member of the American Legion Post 231 – not to mention a husband, father and grandfather – and the winningest racer in the history of the Berlin Bathtub Races.
In fact, Turner’s legacy and influence is so widespread that he is often referred to as “The Mayor of Germantown.”
Born in Accomack County, Virginia in 1930, Turner moved to the area when he was five years old. He described it, back then, as a horse-and-buggy town.
The unincorporated community, based around Germantown and Bethel roads just southeast of modern-day Berlin, was the first African-American neighborhood established in northern Worcester County following the Civil War.
His grandmother, who worked in a tomato cannery, and his step-grandfather, I.B. Henry, raised him.
Henry was a farmer and a landowner who came into Turner’s life a year or two after the family moved to Worcester County. Along with being a father figure, he would become a mentor.
“We were working people [and] he owned half of Germantown,” Turner said. “He was a local preacher at New Bethel Church, and I would sit right in the front row.”
Despite coming from what would have been middle-class roots, Turner set about to make a name for himself independent of his upbringing. After high school, he landed a job in a chicken plant, although he only lasted for about a week.
“I said, ‘Man, I gotta come away from there.’ I had to wear boots in the water all the time. And a raincoat – on the inside,” he said.
Walking down Commerce Street in Berlin, Turner noticed a large “help wanted” sign in the window of Joe’s Shoe Store, a sales and repair shop run by Philadelphia native Joe Ciacco. The year was 1949.
“I came uptown where I could kick my boots off and that was it,” Turner said.
Rather than go to trade school, he learned on the job – partly by necessity. He apprenticed there under “Gard” Jarman.
“A lot of those other guys wouldn’t show up, so I’d be back in the shop banging away,” he said. “Then, on Fridays and Saturdays, Joe never wanted me to work in the back – he wanted me to be out here selling shoes. So, that’s where I got my experience.”
Business was steady, as buying new footwear was not a regular practice during the early 1950s. Turner said most people would “hang onto shoes and just keep getting them fixed,” having new heels and soles put on, rather than discarding them.
Those who could afford new shoes bought them at Joe Holland’s shop – essentially a booth inside a department store on the corner of Main Street – and had them mended at Joe’s Shoe Store.
The clientele at the time was a melting pot of the county – rural and middle-class, black and white, from field hands and factory workers to schoolteachers, all coming to the same place for the same reason.
Work was briefly interrupted when Turner was drafted into the army in 1954. He served for two years, taking basic training in Columbia, South Carolina and then moving between bases in Georgia and Arizona. After his tour of duty ended, he resumed his job in Berlin.
During the 1960s, Joe’s Shoe Store moved to 112 North Main Street.
It became Berlin Shoe Box when Ciacco retired and Norman Bunting took over during the mid-1980s. Turner would buy the business in 1988.
Still, Turner did much more during that span than simply cobble and wait for his turn to own the business. He joined the American Legion upon his return from the army, and has been a leading member of the Masons for more than 50 years.
He also sold cars in the1960s, learning from Wilmore Teagle, and became a landowner and landlord during that time – using whatever money he made to buy small pieces of property, one-by-one. He also started what would become the largest grass-cutting service in the county.
Turner was instrumental in the development of the Germantown School, and he helped resurrect the Memorial Day Parade on Flower Street in Berlin.
Before U.S. 113 cut through town, that event – during the 1930s and 1940s – ran through all of Berlin and was the major happening of its time, drawing thousands and earning comparisons to a local version of Mardi Gras.
The parade stalled out around 1970 and lay dormant for decades, before Turner and a handful of volunteers brought it back to life. Today, the parade is once again one of Berlin’s biggest annual events.
Around 1990, Turner became active in the Berlin Chamber of Commerce. He was president of that organization when the late Jim Barrett launched the Bathtub Races – now a tent pole event in the town – and he later became the most-successful entrant.
“The businesses were into it. They had their little buggies and things,” Turner said. “I won about four or five times in a row [because] I had faster runners. And then I decided to quit while I was on top.”
He remained an integral part of Berlin during the last decade, when the Main Street started earning “best of” honors among small towns, both statewide and nationally.
“Just about everything they had in town, I would participate in,” Turner said. “I just feel good about it, I tell you. The town’s moving and I see it moving more and more in the last five years – it really jumped. You see a lot of improvements and you hope it carries on.”
His overall legacy, as Turner sees it, is as a businessman.
“I enjoyed all of things that I’ve done,” he said. “And I enjoyed making money. The more I made, it just kept coming to me.”
He has employed dozens – perhaps hundreds – during his years as a business owner, and has given shelter to many more as a landlord. He served his community on nonprofit boards and as a community organizer, and continues to be an active member of New Bethel United Methodist Church.
“I didn’t think [the church] would run unless I was there,” he said. “After I got in business and everything like that it, it kind of pulled me away from it, but I still go.”
Turner laughed at the notion of his unofficial title in Germantown.
“Only one or two guys still call me mayor,” he said.
Still, his influence is undeniable.
On several occasions during the interview, Monday, Turner had to inform customers that he was no longer taking work orders.
He stopped each time they came in and paused to talk to them, going as far as to tell one woman, with step-by-step instructions, how he would have fixed her tattered leather shoe.
When asked how far away the closest cobbler was, he tells the would-be customers to try shops in Salisbury – or Dover.
“What I’m going to miss most is being on Main Street,” he said. “Most of the time I’m the first shop that they see when they park their cars. They come in and ask a lot of questions about where is such a thing and what’s the best place to eat. And a lot of times, at City Hall, if they want to know something about [the town’s] history they send them down here to me.”
Berlin resident Gregory Purnell, who has known Turner for more than half a century, called him “a Martin Luther King that didn’t speak.”
Purnell worked closely with Turner on the Old Fashioned Memorial Day Parade and is the emcee of that event.
“Memorial Day is for all Americans and we have begun to see more participants and viewers from different neighborhoods of Berlin,” Purnell said. “It a uniting event that has helped to bring veterans and Berlin closer together, and that’s a credit to both ‘mayors’ [Gee Williams and Turner].
“This man is an icon,” Purnell continued. “He’s known the shore over. How he has helped people and helped the community is a story unto itself. Whatever you want to do in Germantown, even today, the first name that will come up is Jesse Turner.”
During a Town Council meeting on Monday, Berlin Mayor Gee Williams called Turner “one of our most respected and loved merchants.”
“He is truly beloved as a good gentleman who is gentle at heart,” Williams said. “He does everything he can for people. He has always taken care of all his customers, but beyond that he’s just been a great ambassador for our town.”
The Berlin Mayor and Council will publically recognize Turner at town hall at 7 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 27, and will join with Berlin Main Street and the Berlin Chamber of Commerce to honor him again at the Berlin Visitor’s Center on 14 South Main Street from 5-7 p.m. on Thursday, March 2.
Berlin Shoe Box will remain open until March 1. After that, Turner said he plans to move all of his equipment into his garage.
“If I want to do something, I can go on out there and do something,” he said.
Asked if he would prefer privacy there, he replied, “They can come see me.”
More than a mere cobbler, Turner is a U.S. Army veteran and the longtime organizer of the Old Fashioned Memorial Day Parade in Berlin as well as a past master of the Masonic Lodge, past president of the Berlin Chamber of Commerce and member of the American Legion Post 231 – not to mention a husband, father and grandfather – and the winningest racer in the history of the Berlin Bathtub Races.
In fact, Turner’s legacy and influence is so widespread that he is often referred to as “The Mayor of Germantown.”
Born in Accomack County, Virginia in 1930, Turner moved to the area when he was five years old. He described it, back then, as a horse-and-buggy town.
The unincorporated community, based around Germantown and Bethel roads just southeast of modern-day Berlin, was the first African-American neighborhood established in northern Worcester County following the Civil War.
His grandmother, who worked in a tomato cannery, and his step-grandfather, I.B. Henry, raised him.
Henry was a farmer and a landowner who came into Turner’s life a year or two after the family moved to Worcester County. Along with being a father figure, he would become a mentor.
“We were working people [and] he owned half of Germantown,” Turner said. “He was a local preacher at New Bethel Church, and I would sit right in the front row.”
Despite coming from what would have been middle-class roots, Turner set about to make a name for himself independent of his upbringing. After high school, he landed a job in a chicken plant, although he only lasted for about a week.
“I said, ‘Man, I gotta come away from there.’ I had to wear boots in the water all the time. And a raincoat – on the inside,” he said.
Walking down Commerce Street in Berlin, Turner noticed a large “help wanted” sign in the window of Joe’s Shoe Store, a sales and repair shop run by Philadelphia native Joe Ciacco. The year was 1949.
“I came uptown where I could kick my boots off and that was it,” Turner said.
Rather than go to trade school, he learned on the job – partly by necessity. He apprenticed there under “Gard” Jarman.
“A lot of those other guys wouldn’t show up, so I’d be back in the shop banging away,” he said. “Then, on Fridays and Saturdays, Joe never wanted me to work in the back – he wanted me to be out here selling shoes. So, that’s where I got my experience.”
Business was steady, as buying new footwear was not a regular practice during the early 1950s. Turner said most people would “hang onto shoes and just keep getting them fixed,” having new heels and soles put on, rather than discarding them.
Those who could afford new shoes bought them at Joe Holland’s shop – essentially a booth inside a department store on the corner of Main Street – and had them mended at Joe’s Shoe Store.
The clientele at the time was a melting pot of the county – rural and middle-class, black and white, from field hands and factory workers to schoolteachers, all coming to the same place for the same reason.
Work was briefly interrupted when Turner was drafted into the army in 1954. He served for two years, taking basic training in Columbia, South Carolina and then moving between bases in Georgia and Arizona. After his tour of duty ended, he resumed his job in Berlin.
During the 1960s, Joe’s Shoe Store moved to 112 North Main Street.
It became Berlin Shoe Box when Ciacco retired and Norman Bunting took over during the mid-1980s. Turner would buy the business in 1988.
Still, Turner did much more during that span than simply cobble and wait for his turn to own the business. He joined the American Legion upon his return from the army, and has been a leading member of the Masons for more than 50 years.
He also sold cars in the1960s, learning from Wilmore Teagle, and became a landowner and landlord during that time – using whatever money he made to buy small pieces of property, one-by-one. He also started what would become the largest grass-cutting service in the county.
Turner was instrumental in the development of the Germantown School, and he helped resurrect the Memorial Day Parade on Flower Street in Berlin.
Before U.S. 113 cut through town, that event – during the 1930s and 1940s – ran through all of Berlin and was the major happening of its time, drawing thousands and earning comparisons to a local version of Mardi Gras.
The parade stalled out around 1970 and lay dormant for decades, before Turner and a handful of volunteers brought it back to life. Today, the parade is once again one of Berlin’s biggest annual events.
Around 1990, Turner became active in the Berlin Chamber of Commerce. He was president of that organization when the late Jim Barrett launched the Bathtub Races – now a tent pole event in the town – and he later became the most-successful entrant.
“The businesses were into it. They had their little buggies and things,” Turner said. “I won about four or five times in a row [because] I had faster runners. And then I decided to quit while I was on top.”
He remained an integral part of Berlin during the last decade, when the Main Street started earning “best of” honors among small towns, both statewide and nationally.
“Just about everything they had in town, I would participate in,” Turner said. “I just feel good about it, I tell you. The town’s moving and I see it moving more and more in the last five years – it really jumped. You see a lot of improvements and you hope it carries on.”
His overall legacy, as Turner sees it, is as a businessman.
“I enjoyed all of things that I’ve done,” he said. “And I enjoyed making money. The more I made, it just kept coming to me.”
He has employed dozens – perhaps hundreds – during his years as a business owner, and has given shelter to many more as a landlord. He served his community on nonprofit boards and as a community organizer, and continues to be an active member of New Bethel United Methodist Church.
“I didn’t think [the church] would run unless I was there,” he said. “After I got in business and everything like that it, it kind of pulled me away from it, but I still go.”
Turner laughed at the notion of his unofficial title in Germantown.
“Only one or two guys still call me mayor,” he said.
Still, his influence is undeniable.
On several occasions during the interview, Monday, Turner had to inform customers that he was no longer taking work orders.
He stopped each time they came in and paused to talk to them, going as far as to tell one woman, with step-by-step instructions, how he would have fixed her tattered leather shoe.
When asked how far away the closest cobbler was, he tells the would-be customers to try shops in Salisbury – or Dover.
“What I’m going to miss most is being on Main Street,” he said. “Most of the time I’m the first shop that they see when they park their cars. They come in and ask a lot of questions about where is such a thing and what’s the best place to eat. And a lot of times, at City Hall, if they want to know something about [the town’s] history they send them down here to me.”
Berlin resident Gregory Purnell, who has known Turner for more than half a century, called him “a Martin Luther King that didn’t speak.”
Purnell worked closely with Turner on the Old Fashioned Memorial Day Parade and is the emcee of that event.
“Memorial Day is for all Americans and we have begun to see more participants and viewers from different neighborhoods of Berlin,” Purnell said. “It a uniting event that has helped to bring veterans and Berlin closer together, and that’s a credit to both ‘mayors’ [Gee Williams and Turner].
“This man is an icon,” Purnell continued. “He’s known the shore over. How he has helped people and helped the community is a story unto itself. Whatever you want to do in Germantown, even today, the first name that will come up is Jesse Turner.”
During a Town Council meeting on Monday, Berlin Mayor Gee Williams called Turner “one of our most respected and loved merchants.”
“He is truly beloved as a good gentleman who is gentle at heart,” Williams said. “He does everything he can for people. He has always taken care of all his customers, but beyond that he’s just been a great ambassador for our town.”
The Berlin Mayor and Council will publically recognize Turner at town hall at 7 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 27, and will join with Berlin Main Street and the Berlin Chamber of Commerce to honor him again at the Berlin Visitor’s Center on 14 South Main Street from 5-7 p.m. on Thursday, March 2.
Berlin Shoe Box will remain open until March 1. After that, Turner said he plans to move all of his equipment into his garage.
“If I want to do something, I can go on out there and do something,” he said.
Asked if he would prefer privacy there, he replied, “They can come see me.”