ST. THOMAS — Zora Galvin knows a thing or two about longevity. She is celebrating two milestones this year. She recently celebrated her 90th birthday, and her sandal-making business, Zora of St. Thomas, where she still works daily, will mark its 60th year in business next month.
Born in Colombus, Ohio, Galvin’s family moved to Brentwood, Mo., where she lived through high school. It was there that she learned to play the French horn, and she went on to study at the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester in Rochester, N.Y. After graduation, Galvin spent five years in Honolulu, Hawaii, where she worked as a music teacher and played first French horn in the Honolulu Symphony from 1953 to 1958.
From Hawaii, Galvin moved to New York City for a short time, where she married Patrick Miller, a merchant marine radio officer. Because it was easier for Miller to travel back and forth from his two-and-a-half month stints out at sea, they decided to move to a major Caribbean port. The choice was Puerto Rico or St. Thomas.
“When I saw all the Puerto Rican ladies wearing high heels and stockings in the middle of the summer, I decided this was not the place for me,” Galvin said.
The couple moved to St. Thomas in 1960. Unable to procure a job as a music teacher at the time, Galvin needed something to occupy her time, so her husband gave her $500 to open a sandal shop. Sixty years later, Zora of St. Thomas is still going strong.
For Galvin, sandal making was a self-taught, trial-and-error process. She took apart a pair of sandals that she purchased for $12.95 in Hawaii to wear while teaching and started making sandals.
“I didn’t know how to do any of this. I just did it, just figured it out,” she said. “In the very beginning, I took some madras cloth and wrapped it around leather to make some sandals, and sold them in a clothing boutique downtown. Then I started to make leather sandals, just trying them out on my front porch. So, I made a lot of sandals, and I bought back the first ones I sold because I didn’t like them and they weren’t selling.”
Galvin opened her first shop in 1962, beneath the law offices of Harry Drier in the old British Cable Building. The 9 x 12 room was a tight fit, with two employees and Galvin, pregnant with her first daughter, Timisa, a jewelry and glass artist. Her younger daughter, Shansi Miller, is a talented local artist.
In 1965, Zora of St. Thomas moved to the Pissarro Building on Main Street, overlooking Back Street.
“Back Street was really fun in the 1960s,” she said. “You could walk anyplace at that time. That was fun and it was interesting. You could go down and go dancing any time at night. There were steel bands playing at The Gate every night, on the side road leading from Back Street to the Synagogue.”
The business expanded with the addition of canvas bags of all types, from duffel bags and backpacks to totes and more. Galvin rented a space two doors down for the canvas work and opened a shoe repair shop across the street.
In 1980, Zora of St. Thomas moved to its present location in the historic yellow building across from the Franklin D. Roosevelt V.I. Veterans Memorial Park in downtown Charlotte Amalie. She eventually bought the building.
Zora of St. Thomas now offers sandals for men, women and children, as well as full coverage “lineman shoes.”
Customers pick out the style they want, Zora will draw around their foot and the next day, after 5,000 steps around the store, they are custom fitted to the person’s foot.
“Every time I start to make ready-made shoes, I can’t do it right because everybody’s feet are so different,” she said. “The fact that shoe manufacturers in the states make shoes that fit so many people is amazing to me. I haven’t worn anyone else’s shoes but mine in 60 years.”
In addition to sandals, Zora of St. Thomas offers a full range of canvas bags, from traditional bags to whimsical cat, iguana, fish and monster bags among others. There are leather belts as well as her daughter’s jewelry and glasswork, rugs and art by a friend she met while playing in the Honolulu Symphony. There is also a selection of clothing, bedspreads, scarves and other items from India.
Despite raising two daughters, running her sandal shop, her love of travel and taking Tai Chi classes, Galvin never gave up her passion for music. In the late 60s and early 70s, Galvin conducted the Community Band on St. Thomas, playing in the park and marching in the Carnival Parade.
“The Community Band was fun,” said Galvin. “I loved all the people in it. My baton was a bougainvillea stick that had flowers up on the top, so, I led the band with my bougainvillea baton.”
Although styles come and go, many of the classic original styles are still in play.
“It’s amazing,” Galvin said. “We use a lot of the same styles that we did in 1962. We add styles and then I take off styles. It’s more that I just don’t like the way they fit rather than if they are popular or not.”
And, as a lot of local customers can attest to, a pair of Zora sandals are made to last.
“We have a terrific grade of leather and we use a very famous tannery in Chicago for the strap leather. We try to get the best product we can to make sure they not going to fall apart, because I didn’t want to have to do it over again,” Galvin said.
