Sometimes I wonder what happened to the first 10 years of my life. My memories of life during my first decade are distant and vague, almost like they’re snapshots of someone else’s life.
But there are snippets in time that shine a light bright enough to penetrate the fog and reach my conscious mind. Like a proper, guilt-ridden Jewish girl, many of my memories revolve around my poor choices.
Ranking high is the moment in our Bayside hallway when I complained about receiving a measly bike mirror for Chanukah instead of a real present. Or the time I carefully snipped the corners off my brother’s photographs, and kept moving in a circular motion (cut, cut, “no that’s not right”) until the corners looked perfectly even.
There are good memories too: I remember playing dreidel with my grandfather and elderly cousin. I can still feel the rush of running around an Omaha hotel where our extended family gathered for a cousin’s bar mitzvah. I can still taste the candied raisins in my grandparents’ candy dish in their apartment’s fancy living room.
And then there’s Hecker’s. Among the few memories I have is a late summer shopping trip to Hecker’s Shoes on Silver Spring Drive. It was back-to-school season and I was getting saddle shoes.
Mr. Hecker was tall, slender and — in the eyes of my little girl self — really, really nice. He was all good vibes for me.
I think Mr. Hecker fitted me (or oversaw the fitting) from the time I walked until age 11, when my family moved from Milwaukee.
Thirty years later, I shop at Hecker’s with my two daughters. Though the pull of $10 shoes from drek-dealing chain stores and big box stores is strong, I feel good buying from the specialty shop.
At Hecker’s, I am not only assured that my girls’ wide feet are properly fitted with high-quality shoes (and the importance of good shoes cannot be overstated), but I also get a little thrill of nostalgia, a gentle tug of my deep Milwaukee roots.
Last Saturday, more than 51 years after Abe Hecker opened his children’s shoe store on Silver Spring, the shop closed its doors. Presiding over the final details is Marcia Hecker, who began working with her parents in the store as a teen.
In 1972, when her children were little, she returned to the store part time to work the books. In 2000, she remodeled and refocused the store, which had previously doubled its size and served men, women and children.
“I turned it back to its roots as a children’s store,” she said this week. In 2002, when her father died, Hecker took over the shop altogether.
“I’ve loved, loved, loved seeing all these people come in over the years,” she said.
And she is not alone. Since news of the store’s closing has spread, customers have been stopping in and calling to share their feelings.
One woman called to say that she was Hecker’s first customer in April 1957. She said that Abe Hecker opened the store especially for her. Another woman bought seven little pairs of shoes that reminded her of her children when they were little, Hecker told me.
“It’s a wonderful feeling to know that they remember my father,” she said. “It’s all good stuff. It really is.”
The closing of Hecker’s marks the end of an era. It is a little victory for shopping malls in the battle against family businesses. As the Village of Whitefish Bay’s leadership sputters and nearby Bayshore Town Center grows, Silver Spring Drive has been losing businesses at a steady and alarming rate. That’s not only a lost opportunity for Whitefish Bay, but a loss for us all.
We lose the warmth of knowing the people who sell us our clothes and remember our taste. We lose the authentic flavor of our communities to homogenization of national chain stores. And we lose the sense of belonging that develops at a business with real community roots.
For Hecker, the store’s closing is an end but it’s also a beginning. “I’m going to take a deep breath,” she said, and figure out the next step. One thing for sure: she plans to spend more time with the store’s top models, her two granddaughters.
For me, I’ll just have to carry my history with me — bike mirrors, candied raisins, saddle shoes and all.
