John’s Tailoring & Alterations, owned and operated by Sonia Warshawski, closed at the end of April after more than half a century in business.
Sonia Warshawski and her store were the subject of the award-winning 2016 documentary “Big Sonia.” At the time, John’s Tailoring was located in Metcalf South Shopping Center, but the mall’s sale and impending demolition seemed to spell the end of the business. Fortunately, a new location was secured in the basement level of the Bel Air Building on 95th and Nall in Overland Park.
Now, the Bel Air Building is being closed, but this time, Warshawski says there won’t be another location.
“They sold the building, and we have to get out,” she said. “I’ll tell you what — I’m too old to relocate.”
Despite the situation, Sonia greeted and conversed at length with customers up to the very last days her store was open. For decades, Sonia grew and maintained a clientele of countless people, developing friendships with customers far deeper than you’d expect from your average business owner. Meeting so many people, she said, was what she was most proud of regarding the store.
Sitting on a sofa in the front of the store on the day before it shut, Sonia vividly recounted history and told The Chronicle the story of John’s Tailoring.
John Warshawski and the beginning of John’s Tailoring
John’s Tailoring is named after its founder, Sonia’s late husband, John Warshawski.
“We say in Yiddish, beshert [soulmate],” Sonia said about her and John. “For some reason, he was a wonderful, wonderful man.”
John had started out in the luggage industry. In a 1981 interview by Jack Etkin for the now-defunct Kansas City Times, he said that “in the old country, people would buy a piece of luggage, and it stayed underneath the bed... Nobody moved; nobody traveled. My father, may he rest in peace, said, ‘You got an uncle who’s a tailor. Why don’t you go and learn the trade?’”
He trained and became a highly skilled tailor, honing his work until the war broke out.
After the horrors of the Holocaust, during which he spent time in work and concentration camps including Bergen-Belsen, he met Sonia Grynsztejn in a displaced persons camp before moving to the United States in 1948.
“When we came [to Kansas City] right in the beginning, he worked in factories here,” Sonia said about John. “Kansas City was [prominent], especially in clothes. Coats and everything were known all over the country.”
In addition to John’s tailoring skills, Sonia said that he was “a wizard in math.” These talents secured him work with a garment maker at 8th and Broadway before he bought a store at 8th and Troost.
That iteration of the business only lasted for five years, but in 1962, they invested $1,200 into three sewing machines and other equipment. John’s Tailoring was established on the ground floor of the old Ambassador Hotel on 36th and Broadway.
Sonia, meanwhile, had been raising their three children, Regina Kort, Morrie Warshawski and Debbie Warshawski. After the children were grown, she took a job selling women’s clothing.
Over time, business on Broadway began to dwindle. When interviewed by the Kansas City Times in 1981, a wave of migration to the suburbs and subsequent loss of nearby customers posed a threat to the store. When asked about his future and the future of his business, John Warshawski, then 62 years old, said, “You know as well as I do that something will happen… What’s going on here, that’s just a little thing.”
Compared to what John had experienced in his past, business woes were indeed “just a little thing.” In addition to the horrors he’d endured (including nearly losing his left leg in sub-zero temperatures while enduring forced labor), he’d lost five siblings and countless friends and family.
John’s prediction that “something will happen” proved to be right — shortly after the interview in 1981, John’s Tailoring moved to Metcalf South Shopping Center, and business dramatically improved.
As the 1980s progressed, John’s health began declining. Sonia took over the business operations as John’s illness progressed. When John passed away in 1989, Sonia vowed to keep their business going.
In an interview for an article in The Chronicle in 1989, Sonia said that she planned to continue her work at the business as long as she could. The article’s title was “Era of Jewish tailor drawing to a close in Kansas City.” That era lasted another 34 years.
Sonia the Tailor
Sonia’s tailoring skills started before she came to the U.S.; her talent with thread and needle was not just developed for the store.
“My mother was almost a designer,” she said. “She was making all the clothes for us, for the children, and so I learned a lot… Especially in the war, we would take used sweaters, already worn, and we would open it and take the wool out and make other [clothing] from it, even skirts.”
Sonia told The Chronicle in 1989 that she developed a taste for fashion while selling women’s clothing. Having seen and worked through over 50 years of changing styles, Sonia kept up-to-date on all the new fashions.
“You’d be surprised,” she said about evolving styles. “A lot of men still wear suits, women [still have] weddings and proms — for every kind, I had wonderful things.”
“Big Sonia”
In 2016, Leah Warshawski, Sonia’s granddaughter, and her husband, Todd Soliday, created the documentary film “Big Sonia.” The film centers around Sonia and her work at John’s Tailoring, exploring how Sonia’s background affects her, her family, and her ethos in the present. Seven years later, the film’s message is just as sharp and relevant.
At age 15, Sonia watched her mother enter the gas chamber doors in the Majdanek death camp. She endured slave labor and the hells of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bergen-Belsen. Upon the camp’s liberation, she was accidentally shot through her chest.
In “Big Sonia,” she said that she kept busy at the store to keep away her terrible memories of the Holocaust. Now, she says that she intends to keep busy by translating poems and songs written before, during and about the Holocaust.
“I’ll speak for those who never made it, and I feel the Almighty still wants me to do it,” she said.
Saying goodbye
On the day before the store closed, Sonia was graciously offering mementos of her store to everyone who came in — flowers, thread, bookmarks, even entire work tables. This philosophy of treating people with kindness is one of Sonia’s hallmarks.
“Everyone should be treated in a loving way,” she said. “If you handle people with love and understanding and be kind, they feel it. That’s the reason I developed this business.”
Sonia was talking about the importance of learning history when a friend and customer came in. Citing Sonia as an inspiration, she gifted her a rose and asked Sonia how she survived and remained so optimistic.
“The question is not hard,” Sonia replied. “...I am just a human being like anybody else, but I feel this was something higher than me. My surviving, I say, was a miracle.”
As the store was closing, Sonia said, “I feel that [the Almighty] closed a door for me, and I hope He opens a good door… I learned now not to do any planning. I feel a connection still with the Almighty, that maybe He still wants me [here] for a reason.”
