Record Number of Shoes Collected

Shoes, Shoes and More Shoes! District Rotarians Bull Through 250,000 Pairs Mark
Record Number of Shoes Collected by Plaza Rotarians -- 1026 Pairs!

After leading a "caravan" consisting of a tractor-trailer and a couple of cars around the District to collect children's shoes, District 6040 Shoes Cheerleader and fellow Plazan Larry Lunsford declared in Macon on May 10 that he was "bullish" on the number of shoes that had been donated this year.  And was he ever right!  In the 13th year of collecting shoes for the Shoes for Orphan Souls program, the Shoes Cheerleader had challenged District Rotarians to collect at least 16,907 pairs of shoes this year so that the District could exceed 250,000 pairs of shoes donated since the Shoes for Orphan Souls program was initiated in 2001-02, when Larry served as District Governor.  And Rotarians were up to the challenge. Although the final numbers were not yet, the preliminary count was 19,516 pairs of shoes this year, pushing the total to 252,568 pairs over 13 years.

In response to Larry's challenge, Plaza Rotarians donated a record number of 1,026 pairs of new children's shoes to the 2014 campaign. That number surpassed the previous record high of 1,020 pairs in 2011. Grand Shoebah Ed Ladegaard led the Shoes collection effort in the Plaza Club, and did a bang-up job! 

(Pictured: Plaza Rotarians and others helped transfer the bags and boxes of donated shoes from one 54-foot trailer to another trailer donated by UPS and driven by a volunteer UPS driver, who delivered them to Buckner International in Dallas. Many of this year's shoes will end up on the feet of orphan children in Peru.)