Three Texas Mavericks
The American West has always been a place where folks were seldom reluctant to break away from the herd. To go maverick. And here in the immense land mass known as the state of Texas, the land that birthed the maverick mystique, we’ve always thought maybe that was just a little bit extra true.
This trio of Texas leather legends—saddlemaker Nathan Kallison, bootmaker Willie Lusk and boot company owner Enid Justin—proved that religion, skin color and gender are no obstacle when a westerner sets his or her mind on something. Starting out, each was unusual in their field and each found great success. Each was, proudly, a sure enough maverick.
BEST BOOTMAKER IN THE WORLD?
In 1951, Lubbock bootmaker Willie Lusk Jr. gave an interview to a local radio station. Though Willie had only operated his own boot shop for the last five years, national magazines had already noted his uncommon artistry. And his interviewer asked if what folks were saying was true. Was Willie “the best bootmaker in the world?”
Modest, yet self-assured, the six-foot-six-or-so bootmaker demurred. “Well, that’s what people say,” he allowed, “but I don’t know, I just do the best I can, that’s all.”
It’s impossible to say, of course, if Willie Lusk and Walter George of Amarillo were the only 20th-century African American cowboy bootmakers in the big ol’ USA, but not in question was the fact that, if Willie wasn’t the best in the world, he was dang near close. “He belongs to the ‘Greatest of All Time Bootmakers,’” says Texas boot collector and scholar Mark Fletcher, “the Charlie Dunns, the Charlie Garrisons, the Paul Bonds, the Tex Robins, the James Leddys, the Cosimo Luccheses and so on.”
Born in San Angelo in 1914, young Willie went to work shining shoes at a local shoe repair business around the age of 12. Before long, he got a job at N. A. Brown’s Boot Shop, where a Czech immigrant named Frank Urban began teaching him the art and craft of bootmaking. profile of Willie, “and applied the old-world techniques to making boots for West Texas cowboys. Lusk worked with him for seven years, at one dollar per day.”
