She was pregnant, working a Wilmington corporate job and questioning her purpose in life.
It was 1998, and Joanne Glauser remembers picking up a magazine to see bulky sneakers, white crew socks and painted walls of a California school staring back at her. The expectant mom, spending her days in the world of security and finance, found herself absorbed in a September issue of Family Circle.
A young boy had come into his principal’s office seven times complaining that his feet hurt, she read, until finally a secretary at the California elementary thought to take off his shoes. Turns out, the boy’s feet had been crammed into sneakers two sizes too small. She massaged his feet until the toes could once again bend.
Then, she put the shoes back on and sent him back to class.
“The woman told me that there are so many needy kids, they didn’t even know where to start,” said Elodie Silva, quoted in the article from Sept. 15, 1998. Glossy pages in Glauser’s hands celebrated how Silva then launched Shoes That Fit, the outfit quickly growing into a national organization from its small California epicenter.