You wouldn’t expect to find an Italian craftsman cobbling bespoke footwear in a Midwest city with a population under 2,500, but that is exactly what Sam Vasta is doing in Eureka, Kansas. However, Vasta will tell you that it was almost inevitable. “I don’t want to take any credit,” he says, “but I share a name with a very similar story.”
That story belongs to Salvatore “Sam” Lucchese, the Italian immigrant who learned shoemaking in the old country before landing in Texas in the 1880s and founding what would become one of America’s most legendary boot brands, the Lucchese Boot Company. Vasta’s path is almost identical: born in Italy, an apprenticeship in shoemaking, an ocean crossing and the name Salvatore, after his grandfather, who also went by Sam.
