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Photos

The neon Delmar Bootery signage at Delaware Avenue, which lit the Four Corners from the 1950s through the early 1980s. Today the building is home to the popular Perfect Blend Café & Bakery.
Removal of both neon signs, early 1980s. They were replaced with an awning over the entrance and a carved sign that still hangs today in Gail’s store in Stuyvesant Plaza.
Jack Leonardo at home in Delmar with baby Gail, 1952.

Gail Leonardo Sundling

Delmar, NY

1952

 Interviewed at BPL on December 28, 2023 by Eric Bryant w/ Bill Ketzer & Tim Beebe present.

The Leonardo Family name is practically synonymous with Delmar’s Four Corners. Since World War II, their Delmar Bootery has provided quality footwear and shoe repair services to generations of Capital Region families.  Though operating solely out of their Stuyvesant Plaza store these days, they spent 62 of their 85 (and counting) years at FoCo, and that location was also their family home.

Current Bootery owner Gail Leonardo Sundling needed no prompting to take us down the proverbial memory lane, painting vivid pictures of Mid-Century life in the bustling Bethlehem hamlet and the colorful cast that made it so.  Her parents Jack and Jessie brought their shoe repair business here in 1940, to what is now the popular Perfect Blend Café.  Fun fact: that dining area in the back with the stone fireplace?  That was Gail’s living room!

With virtually no experience in shoe repair, Gail stepped up and into the lead role in 1976, after her mother was seriously injured in a car accident.  She was only 24 – and pregnant!  Resourceful, determined and deeply dedicated to her heritage, she not only learned the trade but brought the Bootery into the modern age, growing the trade as founder of a shoemakers guild and through charitable campaigns like Shoes for the Shoeless.

In addition to covering the Leonardo family’s rich business history, Gail provides fantastic childhood memories of what it was like coming of age at the commercial hub of “Old Delmar” in the 50s-60s.  All the bases are covered – the businesses, the families, the vibe, and the traditions.

Photos

Gail’s mother, Jessie Leonardo, 1961.
Gail’s father Jack Leonardo, 1955.
Yearbook photo, BCHS Class of 1970
Jessie and Gail, Delmar Bootery storefront, 1954.
Jessie rejoined Gail at the Bootery in 1978, following her remarkable recovery from a broken neck sustained in a car accident a few years earlier.
Gail’s wedding day, with Jessie in 1974.