John “Peterbug” Matthews · 2012 Honoree

John Matthews is proud of being a fifth-generation Washingtonian and proud of the official sign that identifies the corner of 13th and E Streets Southeast—where for 35 years he has been a constant presence—as “Peterbug Matthews Way.”

The name “Peterbug” goes back to Matthews’ childhood. He grew up in his grandfather’s home not far from what would become “his” block, surrounded by sisters and brothers, with a bad stutter and an imaginary friend called Peterbug. He attended Tyler Elementary School with his friends and siblings, but when the time came, he was sent not to Hine with them, but to Randall, where he knew no one and felt lonely and out of place in the “special” class. He followed his older brother James to Phelps, a vocational high school where, like his brother, he won the Woodward & Lothrop Tool Award for the best student in “shop.” A teacher named Guy Panafino, a retired military man who “stuttered worse than me,” became a friend, accepting invitations to dinner in the Matthews’ home and insisting that John Matthews apply to Oklahoma Technical Institute. In the fall of 1968, too scared to take a plane, Peterbug traveled to Oklahoma by bus. There he studied shoe- and saddle-making and learned to maintain the machinery needed for both crafts. He transferred to Federal City College in D.C. and graduated with a degree in sociology. When he found it hard to find a job using his degree, he fell back on shoe repair. In 1976, he decided that he wanted to work for himself and petitioned the city for use of the Recreation Department building at 13th and E as a shoe repair shop and academy. He has been there ever since.

The block has changed a good deal since those early days when drug dealers assured him “you won’t be here long.” He began inviting local children in, giving a pencil embossed “Peterbug Tool for Higher Learning” to any child who could show up with a notebook. Matthews taught the youths shoe repair, sponsored a football team, and, more importantly, became their friend. He painted the name “Peterbug” on the side of his gold Volkswagen, wrote stories about the adventures of Peterbug, became a presence at the annual “Market Day” festival. He began the tradition of street corner barbeques with graduates of his shoe repair training program and other special friends he calls the “Shoe Shop Boyz II Men,” scored to the tune of the funkadelic music he loves. 

It was around 1984, when he went to the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco as a delegate for Jesse Jackson, that John Matthews finally won the battle with stuttering. Thinking of himself as “the little people’s big candidate,” he had to call upon every method he had ever been taught to speak smoothly. His candidate did not win; just as he himself had been narrowly defeated when he ran for seats on the school board and city council. But you can still find him teaching shoe repair and leather design weekdays at Springarn High School and at his place five days a week after school and all day Saturdays. He is proud of having learned to speak clearly and proud to be accomplishing his larger goal, which is to “save soles – souls – and to heel – heal – people.”