Thomas Bata

(Wikipedia) Tomáš Jan Baťa, CC (September 17, 1914 – September 1, 2008), also known as Tomas Bata Jr. and Tomáš Baťa ml. and "Shoemaker to the World", ran the Bata Shoe Company from the 1940s until the '80s.
Baťa was born in the Czech city of Prague, in what is now the Czech Republic, the son of Czech industrialist Tomáš Baťa. As a boy he apprenticed under his father, Tomáš Sr., who began the T. & A. Bata Shoe company in 1894 in Zlín, Czechoslovakia. His father, however, was killed in a plane crash when Tomáš was only 17, in 1932. Continued

Photos: Bata shoe factory, Belcamp, Maryland (kilduffs). Bata Bullets shoe label (Charlie's Sneaker Pages).