Chuck Taylor Converse All Star: The Man Who Made the Shoe

Charles Hollis “Chuck” Taylor was born in Brown County, Indiana in 1901 and went on to become a professional basketball player (never full-time, just a few semi-pro gigs) long before the NBA was formed. When the game ended for him, he started working for Converse in 1922 as a sneaker salesman and marketer. Taylor was a player and coach for the company’s industrial basketball team, the “Converse All-Stars,” which was also the name of a style of sneakers he helped redesign. The company thought so much of his contributions, it added his name to the ankle patch in 1932. Nearly a century later, it remains one of the world’s best-selling basketball shoes.

A part of the annual Sharing Hoosier History Through Stories series, this live event is a collaboration with Storytelling Arts of Indiana. Telling Hoosier History Through Stories brings to life one aspect of Indiana’s history in an engaging hour-long presentation.

David Matlack has been a storyteller since 1990 and performed at festivals across the country, including George West StoryFest in Texas, Atlanta Storytelling Festival, Tell it to the Mountains in Asheville, North Carolina and Florida Folk Festival. He was the 2016 winner of the Annual Liar’s Contest at Indiana State Fair and has performed for Ghost Stories at Crown Hill Cemetery since 2015. Other credits include “The Oracle of Delphi: A Grand History of the Delphi Opera House,” a story he premiered for If These Walls Could Tell Series in 2018. Matlack graduated from Earlham College, before heading to Purdue University to earn a doctorate of veterinary medicine. He has returned to Earlham as a visiting professor of anatomy & physiology, biochemistry, medicinal chemistry and other subjects. Matlack is currently the director of the physiology teaching labs at Indiana University Bloomington.

Sponsored by Storytelling Arts of Indiana and Indiana Historical Society, in partnership with the Batesville Public Library.