Delavan shoe store owner remembered as generous, kind-hearted

Dec. 20--DELAVAN -- Tom Kawczynski will be remembered as a generous people person who never let his inner salesman rest, his son said.

"He'd go up to strangers just to talk," Tom Kawczynski Jr. said of his father, who owned Tom's Family Shoes in Delavan for nearly 30 years.

People used to joke that Kawczynski could sell refrigerators to Eskimos, he said.

Kawczynski, 88, died Thursday in New Mexico, where he had retired with his wife, Camilla.

Kawczynski was a Korean War veteran and worked at Grimsrud Shoes in Milwaukee after returning from the Army, Tom Jr. said.

He met Camilla while traveling to shoe stores in Wisconsin, Illinois and Iowa to audit their records. He was on assignment in Boscobel when they met, and they were married within a year, Camilla said.

The couple moved to Delavan in April 1962 to open Tom's Family Shoes.

Kawczynski bought what was formerly Doepke's Shoes from Al Doepke, and he also bought Doepke's house, Tom Jr. said.

It was a family business. All four of Kawczynski's sons--Mark, Tom Jr., Bill and Jon--worked in the store at some point in their lives. When the boys were away at school or working elsewhere, Camilla filled in.

The store closed in 1991, when the Kawczynskis retired.

Kawczynski loved making people laugh and smile, Tom Jr. recalled. On Saturdays, his sons might find him in the back office enjoying a cup of coffee and a cigarette with the police chief, the fire chief or someone else.

Lifelong friends and five-minute acquaintances were treated the same way, Tom Jr. said.

"The door was always open," he said.

"He was a very loving and happy person and a very good person," Camilla said.

If people couldn't afford new shoes, Kawczynski usually could find a way to make the purchase work--sometimes through bartering, Tom Jr. said.

Tom Jr. recalled shopping with his father as a child shortly before Christmas. It was a standard trip to the grocery store until the end.

Tom Jr. pointed out to his father a woman who was buying dog food, but he knew she didn't have a dog. She just couldn't afford groceries.

After they had checked out and carried everything to the car, Kawczynski told his son to wait for a moment.

Years later, he told his son he had gone back into the store and bought the woman a cart full of groceries. That was just the kind of person he was, Tom Jr. said.

Kawczynski was also a Wisconsin sports fan. He loved the Green Bay Packers and Badgers but still had a soft spot in his heart for the Yankees because his good friend Tony Kubek played shortstop for them, Tom Jr. said.

At home, in the shoe store or on the street, Kawczynski had a way of making everyone feel special, he said.

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