The Roanoke Times | File 2008

Harley Helms, who died Saturday, worked as a cobbler at his Blacksburg shop, which closed in 2008.

Retired cobbler and avid league bowler Harley Helms died Saturday at home. He was 86.

Born deaf, Helms never learned to read or write but worked as a cobbler for seven decades, until he was put out of his downtown shop in 2008.

Today a Verizon wireless store operates in the spot where workers and cops once stopped for a cup of coffee and a chat -- and to sometimes get a heel lift or a little patch on a favorite pair of shoes.

Before it closed, Harley's Shoe Shop might have been called the unofficial town museum, given Helms' affection for old photos and knickknacks from its history.

"He was a part of old Blacksburg, but he was new Blacksburg, too. He spanned a lot of years," Mayor Ron Rordam said.

When Helms reluctantly closed the store, he was serving customers from as far as West Virginia, and as close as the Virginia Tech campus.

"The timing was always right when I would be walking in the afternoon. He'd come down the road in that car with the American flags and that smile and wave that, no matter what, would always brighten your day," Rordam said.

"It just leaves an empty spot," the mayor said. "It's a spirit that won't be replaced."

A hunter, fisherman and horseman in his youth, Helms seemed much younger than his 86 years. At the time of his death, he bowled in five leagues and pounded the lanes five days a week, his sister Ruth Payne said.

But for the past two months, Helms had suffered from severe emphysema. It affected his bowling and in recent weeks had kept him at home, Payne said.

But he still loved to play with his dog, Pepper, which Payne bought him around the time the shop closed.

Payne found Helms on Saturday collapsed in the snow outside the house they shared, where he had gone to take Pepper, she said.

Since then, friends have dropped by and town crews have helped clear snow in preparation for the funeral set for Wednesday.

"He was just a wonderful person, a wonderful brother," Payne said. "And he had so many wonderful friends."

Payne said she was never allowed to coddle her brother as he was growing up, despite his disabilities. But the family watched over him all his life, even paying the rent on his shop when it ceased to make a profit.

Helms' father, Howard, tried to send his only son to the school for the deaf in Staunton in the 1930s. But the boy cried so hard at the thought of being left behind, his dad brought him home and apprenticed him to Giles County cobbler Frank Mutter.

The Mutter brothers -- Lloyd, Campbell and Frank -- were a well-known shoe repair dynasty, running shops in Pearisburg and Blacksburg up until Lloyd retired in 2001. Helms set up shop in Blacksburg and practiced there for 71 years.

After closing in 2008, Helms got to know Warner Baker, a Tazewell County native and Pearisburg resident. In October, Baker reopened a shoe shop in the old Mutter location in Pearisburg, near the historic courthouse.

Today Old Towne Shoe Repair is not only a business, it also is a living memorial to the men who plied the cobbler trade.

There Baker fixes and polishes shoes using some of Helms' old equipment.