Salt Lake Community College instructor Don Roundy has resurrected an old-fashioned occupation.
Roundy teaches students and community members about the traditional methods of constructing shoes and boots by hand. The shoe design and production courses offered at Taylorsville Redwood Campus give students the opportunity to learn this valuable skill.
SLCC Fashion Institute program manager Mojdeh Sakaki says that the purpose of the courses is to train students to meet the recent demand for sustainable, handcrafted products that last.
Roundy has been teaching the course for three years. He says that it took him 30 years to develop the technique he currently uses.
“I’m the one who made it up,” he says.
He consulted books, such as the one he uses as a textbook in class, but had no one to teach him the craft in person.
“I did it the hard way,” Roundy says. “I wish there’d been a class like this [for me].”
Student Mark McGraw refers to the technique as the “Roundy method.” He says that Roundy has taken a concept that can be more complicated than “what any bootmaker out there is doing, and he’s simplified it so that any yahoo can understand it. It’s an amazing thing.”
According to Sakaki, Roundy’s classes are the only college shoemaking courses available in the Intermountain West.
Retired University of Utah journalism photography instructor Brent Herridge says he enjoyed learning from Roundy.
“[Roundy] has gotten to the point that he’s more comfortable teaching because he doesn’t realize he’s teaching anymore,” he says.
Making custom footwear may not be a common practice, but it can have a huge impact on those who wear them.
SLCC culinary instructor Leslie Seiferle says that podiatrists referred her to Roundy because of a birth defect in her foot that affects the plantar fascia. She says that she would have been crippled without the foot support that Roundy’s boots provided.
Seiferle says the price of the boots “was well over $500, and worth every penny.”
To perform her work duties, Seiferle has to stand on her feet for long periods of time. Without the boots Roundy made, Seiferle claims she would have been forced to give up her profession.
“I was ecstatic when I found out the school was going to bring him on,” she adds.
The shoe design and production courses are taught during the fall, spring and summer semesters. Community members over the age of 62 are invited to audit the classes for $10 each. Seating is limited.
Email Mojdeh Sakaki to register for the courses.
