My husband died six weeks ago, and while cleaning his workshop, I found a box filled with children\u2019s shoes, ranging from sizes 2 through 7. We never had children, so I couldn\u2019t understand why every pair had a child\u2019s name and a date attached to it.<\/p>\n
I took the shoes to the store listed on the receipt. When the owner learned I was his wife, she pulled out a binder and explained that for nine years, my husband had quietly bought shoes for every new foster child who came through the local shelter. She had kept records because she eventually gave him a special discount.<\/p>\n
There were forty-one names in that binder\u2014forty-one children, forty-one pairs of shoes. My husband had never told me about them, and he had never given the shelter his name. He simply wanted children who had already lost so much to have something that belonged to them.<\/p>\n
Then I noticed the little sticky notes tucked inside each pair. The store owner smiled and explained, \u201cHe wanted the kids to write their own names inside, so they\u2019d always know those shoes were truly theirs.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My husband died six weeks ago, and while cleaning his workshop, I found a box filled with children\u2019s shoes, ranging from sizes 2 through 7. We never… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19053,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-story"],"yoast_head":"\n