‘Dr. Bowtie’s’ signature look distinguishes retired podiatrist in part-time bagger role

If you’ve gone shopping in the past year at the Hy-Vee store on South Minnesota Avenue, there’s a chance you’ve run into Mark Bradley.

You probably wouldn’t know his name, but you might remember his bowtie. The diminutive older man in the brown-rimmed glasses is the only employee in the checkout lane who wears one.

“One” is a bit of an understatement. 

The retired podiatrist and part-time Hy-Vee grocery bagger wears a new one every day, and he never runs out. He has ties with telephones, playing cards, joggers, Monopoly game boards, bicycles, baseball and football team logos, and theme ties for every holiday but Groundhog Day. He has so many Christmas ties that he could wear five a day all December long without repeating one. 

Recently, he came to work sporting bowties from his moped collection – mopeds because he used to ride one, which he called his “little hog” or “piglet,” and because the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally officially had kicked off. When COVID-19 precautions are necessary, he has masks to match. 

“I used to wear them all the time at the VA,” said Bradley, who spent eight years at the Royal C. Johnson Veterans Memorial Hospital after 25 years in private practice in Brookings. “They called me ‘Dr. Bowtie.’”

Bradley isn’t a collector, though. He’s a crafter. He makes every bowtie with the help of his wife, Laurie, and he has amassed well over a wardrobe’s worth over the years.

“I stopped counting after 1,000,” he said, noting that he’d hit that mark well over a decade ago.

The Canada-born, U.S.-educated doctor picked up his folded fabric habit in 1998. That was the year he saw a professor named Bob Pengra, who has since died, wearing a bowtie in a Fourth of July parade. Bradley knew Pengra from church, and eventually he asked for a pattern. That December, Bradley cut and folded his first few bowties – amateur attempts he eventually tossed.

“I didn’t know how to tie them at first,” he said.

But he learned. He upped his performance along the way as well. If he has everything he needs at hand, he now can make one in a half-hour. His wife typically cuts the patterns, and he does the rest. 

Over the years, he has made bowties for his now-grown sons, one of whom wore them for musical performances, given them away to friends and created a system for organizing and tracking not just his output but which ties he has worn and when. The advent of smartphones has been helpful, as he now can take selfies of each day’s selections to keep in a diary for reference.

He picks up fabric at local shops, but he and his wife also make it a point to run the quilt shop circuit on cross-country trips to visit their children. The fabric selections in Kansas City are especially extensive, he said.

The hobby is a peaceful way to pass the time, Bradley said, but it’s also a way to pass along tiny moments of levity to the people he meets each day. It was a conversation starter for his patients and friends for decades. Now, as he bags groceries to stay busy in retirement, it’s a way to brighten the day of strangers. 

“It’s something unique and something I do for myself, but people notice,” said Bradley, who picked Hy-Vee in part because he did the same job in his native Ontario as a teenager. “You can see the smiles a couple of rows over.”

His new co-workers have noticed too. Jeff Grossman, the store’s general service manager, appreciates the doctor’s carefree demeanor and fashion sense, although he only recently learned about the 67-year-old’s former profession and the extent of his bowtie hobby.

“Out of all my courtesy staff, he’s probably the one who interacts the most with the customers,” Grossman said. “He’s just a great guy.”

Grossman hasn’t requested a bowtie for himself yet. At this point, there just aren’t many occasions in the young man’s life that call for one. 

“I’d need to have a function to wear it at first,” he said.