After medical school, Joe specialized in designing emergency rooms, and the young couple moved many places: Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, New Orleans. But this area was always home, and when Joe was asked to work at the new Shady Grove Adventist Hospital in Rockville, they happily returned to their roots. Terry taught at Bethesda Elementary School and was studying for an MBA when the changing face of their hometown caused a family crisis. Fortuna’s had been operating for years with no lease, and one day Giuseppe got a notice: You have 60 days to vacate, the whole block is being demolished. “He looked at the letter, put it in his apron pocket, took off the apron, hung it up and went home,” Terry says. “A week later he moved to Florida.” He also cleaned out the company bank account, leaving behind no capital, no lease, no jobs for his workers. Call the customers, he told his children, tell them to pick up their belongings, shut the place down. “My husband and his sister were a little upset about that and, frankly, I was, too,” says Terry. “There were 10 employees. Where were these men going to go? So I had a meeting with them and they said they wanted to do something.”
The first idea was to turn the business over to Giuseppe’s stepson, an itinerant construction worker. They found a new location on Elm Street, but within six months the new owner had run the store into the ground, so Joe and Terry bought him out. “My husband said ‘Just go in there and be there for a while and then the men can take over,’ ” recalls Terry. “…That was in 1984. And here I am.” Within a few years, she had moved the store to its current location on Woodmont Avenue (near the corner of Fairmont), and opened five new outlets, from White Flint to Tysons Corner. But to keep the quality, she visited every location, every day, and the pace was punishing. Then her five children finished college and her health declined: “It was a real drain on me. And I thought, I don’t need this anymore, but I couldn’t let it all go.” So she cut back to one store, closing the others, and that’s where she presides today, wearing a welcoming smile and an apron festooned with buttons that say “Peace Love Handbags” and “Trust Me I’m a Cobbler.”
She loves seeing old customers, such as members of the Marriott family, whose drivers will park their limousines outside while running in with damaged shoes or purses: “I like that, I like to think that’s how they got wealthy, because they didn’t squander it.” But former students from her teaching days can remind her of the passing years: “I won’t recognize this guy, with a gut and thinning hair and a gray beard, and he’ll go, ‘Remember when you had me in sixth grade?’ And I’ll go, ‘Please get out of here.’”
Washington is a good place for a business such as Fortuna’s because, Terry says, “it’s very conservative, fashion-wise.” People buy “classic items that don’t go out of style” and are worth repairing: “We’re fixing Ferragamo boots that some of these women have had for 15 years.” And they’re fixed in the old way. In the spirit of Amadeo and Giuseppe. One of her workmen will only use a 100-year-old, footdriven sewing machine because he can precisely control its rhythm. But there are limits. Some women buy shoes on sale that don’t fit well and ask Terry to stretch them into shape. She shows me a sharply pointed number with 4-inch heels that would only feel comfortable on a woman with three toes. And then she laughs: “Don’t expect miracles.”
Steve Roberts, who teaches journalism and political science at George Washington University, wrote about his own childhood in his latest book, My Fathers’ Houses. Send ideas for future columns to svroberts@aol.com.
