Things get busy bright and early at 7522 W. 80th St. in downtown Overland Park.

Within just an hour of the shop’s opening for the day on a morning last week, a line stretched to the door. As Roger Hodgson and Pink Floyd hits drifted through the shop, customers held shoes in their hands — and many of them weren’t there for the first time.

As the owner went back and forth between greeting customers at the counter and answering more of them on the shop’s ringing phone, a sign sat on top of the counter: “Work will be ready after 4 p.m. on the day promised (unless the shoe dude is running behind)”.

The “shoe dude” in question, Henry Barbosa, has been behind the counter at Overland Park Shoe Repair for roughly four decades. In that time, he said, he hasn’t had to do much at all to ensure the shop stays busy.

“I’m very blessed,” he said. “I just open the door, and that’s what happens. People come in.”

In the next couple of weeks, longtime customers (or anyone looking to restore their favorite kicks) will get their last chance. Barbosa will retire at the end of this year, closing Overland Park Shoe Repair for good.

Barbosa started fixing shoes decades ago

A Kansas City, Missouri native, Barbosa found his trade young, beginning to work at shoe repair shops in the area after high school.

“I learned as I went, from various kinds of people with different skill levels,” he said. “It just kind of fit.”

He began working at Overland Park Shoe Repair in the late 1980s, and by 1990, he was the shop’s owner. Overall, Barbosa is the fifth person to own the shop, which has been in Overland Park for several decades.

Today, it’s a one-man operation. Barbosa handles all the repairs in the workshop at the back of the store, and he greets every customer who walks into the front.

To him, the latter has proven equally as important as the former.

“I’ve gotten to know wonderful people from different walks of life with different philosophies, different denominations, affiliations, and just kept my finger on the pulse of humanity that way,” he said. “It’s that human touch, that service-oriented thing that, in my opinion, seems to lack for the most part in the city or in the world.”

Barbosa works on all kinds of shoes

The shoes people bring in range from sneakers and boots to heels and sandals. Barbosa has also repaired other leather items, such as purses.

While some of the work is purely cosmetic (such as fixing scuff marks), a lot of it is more practical than that. For example, some longtime customers have brought shoes in for orthopedic purposes — such as having one leg that’s shorter than the other, and needing two different shoe heights to accommodate that.

“I can’t just rely on one thing to bring the people in,” Barbosa said. “You have to be able to do multiple things and different skill sets that all evolve around shoe repair, but go a lot further.”

The shop will close in December

Customers have until Oct. 31 to drop their items off for repairs. Then the shop will remain open until Dec. 31, as Barbosa completes those final repair jobs.

The decision to close, he said, came mostly from a desire to just see what else life could hold. Now 66, he aims to explore other things he’s curious about while he’s healthy and able.

“I’m curious about a lot of things, and I still am open-minded and teachable,” he said. “This is all I’ve ever done my whole life. To be able to go somewhere and just open the door, and then have the ability to walk away from it on my own terms, it’s kind of a cool thing.”

His retirement news has been met with mixed emotions from his longtime business neighbors and customers. While many are sad to see the shop go, he said, most of them know how hard he’s worked over the past few decades to earn this next chapter.

“It’s been a wonderful journey,” he said. “I’m pretty excited about it. At the end of the day, that’s all that really matters.”

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