Out in Greene County, Iowa

A celebration (or requiem?) for the classic always stylish black & white saddle shoes

By CHUCK OFFENBURGER
December 23, 2004
COOPER, IOWA

Mitchell V. Massey, of Kennebunk, Maine, said he walked past a shoe store in a New England shopping mall recently and saw a pair of black & white saddle shoes in the windows.

“Then I saw some young people wearing those same shoes,” said Massey, 55, a former executive at G.H. Bass & Co., once the nation’s premier shoemaker. “I thought, ‘Man, this is odd! What is going on here?’ And the next thing I know, I’ve got a message that Chuck Offenburger is calling me from Iowa.”

The spirit is stirring again. That is what is going on here.

Ten years ago right now, UPS drivers were making hurried stops at homes and businesses across Iowa. They were delivering 675 pairs of specially-ordered black & white saddle shoes, fresh off the production lines at the Bass factories around the company’s headquarters in South Portland, Maine. Bass president Don Sappington had ordered that the shoes be made and delivered “in time for all those Iowa people to be able to wear them to their Christmas church services.”

It was the successful conclusion of the “Back in the Saddle” campaign that I had waged in my “Iowa Boy” columns in the Des Moines Register. Our mission: Convincing Bass to start making black & white saddle shoes again after a hiatus of nearly 10 years.

Actually, Sappington pulled the first 10 pairs of saddle shoes that were made, and had his sales representatives wear them to the New York City Shoe Show, which was being held late in that fall of 1994. The Bass reps went into that show, wearing those flashy shoes, telling the story of the “Iowa Buy” as they called it – and they got orders for 10,000 pairs!

That landed me on page 1 of the New York Times fashion section – certainly the high point of my journalism career.

And the rickety pair of worn-out saddle shoes I had been wearing when I launched the campaign wound up being displayed in the museum in the State Historical Building in Des Moines.

So, hopefully, you can understand why I was starting to feel all warm and fuzzy as the 10-year anniversary of the “Back in the Saddle” campaign came around.

The classic Bass black & white saddle shoe, complete with the requisite orange crepe sole. Always in style, saddle shoes make your feet happy. And when you walk into a crowded room wearing them, people don't notice your earring or other personal peculiarities near as quick.

That’s why I made plans to get back in touch with my ol’ pal Mitchell Massey in Maine. He had been senior vice-president/retail for G.H. Bass & Co. back in 1994. He was the corporate officer who decided – after reading excerpts from hundreds of letters that Iowans had written urging Bass to start making my favorite shoes again – that the company would comply. Or as he put it in a registered letter to me back then, “We surrender.”

I had written column after column about the campaign.

The first one told how my Bass black & whites were completely worn out, and how my shoe repairperson Linda Hart at the Country Cobbler shop in Conrad, Iowa, was refusing to fix them another time. My unsuccessful search for new Bass saddles in stores and catalogs had led me to the company's ''customer hotline,'' where I learned Bass had quit making the shoes in the 1980s. I asked if they'd special make me a pair, and they refused. I asked how many of my friends would have to agree to buy a pair before they'd make some, they told me ''you don't have that many friends.''

Well!

I wrote how I had checked with the other five “known adult male wearers of Bass black & white saddle shoes in Iowa, and found we all have the same problem – our shoes are shot.” Those wearers included Register sports columnist Maury White, Sioux City Journal columnist Tim Gallagher, noted Dubuque bistro owner Jim Kunnert and others.

I asked my readers to write funny letters to Bass, but to send them to me at the Register, about why the company should indeed start making saddle shoes again. The letters came by the dozens.

Meanwhile, a flanking movement was being led from Tennessee by my college buddy Douglas T. Bates III, an attorney and shoe fashion leader in the town of Centerville there.

In about the fifth column I wrote during the campaign, I was quoting more letters from readers, telling how cool they thought the shoes were and how they really wanted to order some. Among those I quoted was a school teacher from Atlantic, Iowa – I’ve lost her name now – who had a great idea.

She noted that actor Clint Eastwood was spending that fall in Winterset, Iowa, making the new movie “Bridges of Madison County.” She suggested that “if you could just get Clint Eastwood to put on a pair of black & white saddle shoes for one scene in that movie, everybody in America would want them.” I quoted that letter, but then added, “Well, terrific idea, but Clint and I aren’t talking much lately.”

Massey’s letter to me made reference to that.

“Mr. Offenburger,” he wrote, “you do not need to try to get Clint Eastwood to put on a pair of those shoes for you in that movie. We surrender.”

He told me to take shoe orders from Iowans, double-check their sizes, get their checks made out to Bass Shoes ($65 for men and $62.50 for women), then forward all that with the people’s mailing addresses.

“One time only,” he said, Bass would make anybody in Iowa a pair of saddle shoes.

“And, Mr. Offenburger,” Massey added, “you better order two pair yourself.”

So, I did.

But I had no idea how Iowans might actually respond to the news that they could indeed now order Bass saddle shoes. Would we get 50 orders? 100 orders? Who knew?

Three weeks later, my wife Carla – who interrupted the writing of her thesis for a master’s degree at Iowa State University in order to handle all the correspondence – shipped our order to G. H. Bass for the 675 pairs of saddle shoes. We also sent checks totaling more than $48,000!

That’s what got Bass President Sappington’s attention – and, of course, the attention of everybody else at Bass HQ. Thereafter I didn’t have any trouble getting my phone calls to them returned, I’ll tell you that.

We had Iowa Governor Terry Branstad wearing the beautiful Bass B&Ws. Likewise for opera great Simon Estes, and Lisa Bluder, then the coach of the Drake University women’s basketball team, now coaching the Iowa Hawkeye women.

Frank Sanders, the coach of the Johnston Dragons boys basketball team in a suburb just northwest of Des Moines, said he’d always liked saddle shoes, and if we could get him a pair by the time his season started, he’d wear them for games. We did that – his were special made at Bass to get them done and delivered to him for his first game of that season – and his team started winning…and winning…and winning. In fact, the Dragons rang up 58 straight victories and two state championships, and Sanders wore those Bass B&W saddle shoes every game until the streak ended. Even the Dragon mascot – large and furry in gold and purple – wore saddle shoes.

Bill Krause, the Kum & Go and Liberty Banks boss who is the original shoe nut in Iowa (he has several hundred pair), ordered 12 pairs of saddle shoes for his executive staff at Krause Gentle Corporation. He made the execs all wear them when they went out on store visits, too.

The next summer, the State Fair Singers & Jazz Band – a touring troupe of 37 of Iowa’s best high school singers and instrumentalists now known as “Celebration Iowa” – wore Bass B&Ws.

God it was fun.

Of course, the more people wore them, the more other people wanted them. About four years later, Bass reps told me they’d sold 4,000 pairs in Iowa since that fall of ’94. The company got to the point that if you were from Iowa and called their 800 number and wanted B&W saddle shoes, they’d just send them to you with a bill and you could send a check later.

But then, things began to change.

First, Bass became a division of Phillips-Van Heusen. Then came the reports that the Bass factories in Maine were being scaled back, eventually closed completely, and the company was out-sourcing production of its shoes to Mexico and elsewhere. About 18 months ago, I started getting reports from around Iowa that when people were calling the company, service was becoming balky.

In February, 2004, the other shoe came down, so to speak.

It was announced that the huge Brown Shoe Company, based in St. Louis, had bought all production and licensing rights “to design, source and market” Bass shoes. Phillips-Van Heusen would continue to operate Bass factory outlet stores, but control of all Bass products moved to St. Louis. Bass closed its headquarters and ceased all operations in Maine, which had been home for the company for more than 100 years.

I had some hope when I realized that Diane Sullivan, 48, who had been president of Bass in its waning years in Maine, had moved to St. Louis to become president of Brown Shoe. Alas, I have tried to reach her for comment, without response.

Of course, that was after I had inquired about the availability of Bass B&Ws now, and got this message from Brown Shoe’s corporate public relations office:

“We appreciate your interest in Bass shoes; however, we regret to inform you that we no longer produce a men’s black/white saddle style.”

I just hardly know what to do.

But at least I felt a little better after visiting with my former Bass contact Mitchell Massey in Maine.

After the ’94 “Back in the Saddle” campaign, he rode on up the executive trail, going to work for the corporate parent Phillips-Van Heusen. He tells me that now he commutes from Kennebunk to Princeton, N.J., where he is heading up the famous Lenox China company, makers of fine tableware, including that used at the White House.

Massey said he gets a kick out of thinking back to the “Iowa Buy.” And he likes seeing younger people wearing the shoes, even if it’s because they think they’re “funky” or “retro.”

Does he still put on his own pair of Bass B&Ws?

“Yes, as a matter of fact,” he said. “I do on occasion.”

Me, too.