Unless you’ve lived in Texas for a while, you might not realize the value of a good pair of boots…or a good bootmaker…but one such man was dubbed the “Michelangelo of Cowboy Boots” and even had a song written about him!
Charlie Dunn was born September 19, 1898 on a houseboat floating on Arkansas’ White River, the third of ten children born to Thomas and Molly Dunn. The family came to Texas in a covered wagon when Charlie was three and settled in Glory, near Paris, just inside the Oklahoma border.
A 5th-generation bootmaker (his great-great grandfather, Winfield Scott Duam, was a bootmaker in County Cork, Ireland), young Charlie began apprenticing under his father on his 7th birthday. He finished his first pair of boots when he was eleven–a birthday present to himself. For the next 79 years, Charlie spun stories and stitched boots for the likes of cowboy movie stars Gene Autry and Slim Pickens, western writer J. Frank Dobie, and country musicians Ernest Tubb and Jerry Jeff Walker. His boots sold for over $3000 a pair, and people would gladly wait three years for delivery!
I love biographies like his–stories of humble men who accomplished great things.
