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After a half-century, teens from Oxford Circle honor a friend they can’t forget | Jenice Armstrong

When Ulysses “Ike” Gammage opened his shoe repair shop in 1967, he was the first black man whom many of the teens who hung out at Castor Avenue and Benner Street had ever met.

When Ulysses “Ike” Gammage, center, opened his shoe-repair shop in Oxford Circle in 1967, and it was the neighborhood's first black-owned business. For many youngsters in that area, he was the first black person they had known. His shoe-repair shop became a hangout, and they never forgot him.
When Ulysses “Ike” Gammage, center, opened his shoe-repair shop in Oxford Circle in 1967, and it was the neighborhood's first black-owned business. For many youngsters in that area, he was the first black person they had known. His shoe-repair shop became a hangout, and they never forgot him.Read moreCHARLES FOX / Staff Photographer

When Ulysses “Ike” Gammage opened his Oxford Circle shoe-repair shop in 1967, he was the first black man the teens who hung out at Castor Avenue and Benner Street had ever met.

Back then, he was a tall, strapping man with a southern drawl who had moved to Philadelphia from his hometown of Columbus, Ga., and his shop was the first business in the neighborhood owned by an African American. I can picture folks turning to look as they walked by.

Gradually, Gammage and the teenage boys who hung out on the corner got to know each other. He would invite them inside for sodas from his vending machine, and regale them with stories about the Negro National League.

He was older, but not as old as their parents, and they could talk to him. New Father & Sons Shoe Service at 6037 Castor Ave. became a place where teens walked in just to talk to the man while he resoled shoes and repaired heels.

“Now, you have to understand the real complexion of what we’re talking about — 1967-ish in Northeast Philadelphia, Oxford Circle was lily-white,” recalled Joe Kennedy, who works in the Philadelphia Sheriff’s Office.

“To be honest, as kids, he was a curiosity to us," Kennedy said. “And we would walk by his shop and Ike used say to us, ‘Come on in. It’s nice and cool in here. I’ve got air-conditioning.’”

Mark Wright, now retired from SEPTA, said: “Before I would go and meet my buddies who were all hanging on the corner ... I would stop in to Ike’s shop for at least an hour. Ike to me was like a second father.”

Things have changed so much since then. The Vietnam War, mercifully, is over. Next month is the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. America’s first black president has moved in and out of the White House.

The friends who used to hang out at Gammage’s shop in the late 1960s are in their 60s now. Some have retired. Their old neighborhood haunts have become much more diverse. What remains the same is their affection for Ike. They visit when they can.

On Friday, some of them from back then gathered at the High Tides Restaurant & Bar in Bensalem to honor their old friend, now 81. It was refreshing to see so much love in one place. Politics were put to the side. It was all about the old days, and remembering a time when life’s possibilities had felt boundless, and they had Ike giving them advice and encouraging them to “keep their noses clean.”

The highlight came when the men gathered for a group photo and presented Gammage with a plaque that reads in part: “With recognition for all you have done for our community. Given with Love from Your ‘Kids’ of Castor and Benner.”

Yes: Kids. As if all that time had never passed.

“Ike, do you know what you used to do? You used to kill people with kindness,” Wright said. “And when you kill people with kindness, they can’t do anything else but like you. How could they not?”

Gammage responded in his grandfatherly voice: “It’s like I told you. 'When you treat people with kindness, it makes them feel good. It makes you feel better.’”

That Ike. Still teaching more than a half-century later. And those kids, now in the autumn of their lives, taking it all in.

I slipped out soon after that, leaving them with their Ike and their memories.