by Aaron Butts
As Lent descends upon the Christian community, Catholics and many Protestants give up something in their lives as a way of appreciating the little things, and getting closer to the suffering of Jesus.
Friends declare that they will give up sweets until Easter and only two weeks later they’re caught on the couch with a box of Krispy Kremes. The same thing happens with people who attempt New Year’s Resolutions.
Whether it’s for a little over a month or for a year, the problem with attempting to make a drastic change in one’s life is that it sounds really great and convenient in the planning stages, but when it comes down to initiating the change, it’s difficult to carry out.
Not only that, but what usually forces people to give up is the amount of effort it takes to keep up the enthusiasm about it. Senior Logan Froehlich proved this stereotype wrong when, as of March 4, he concluded an entire calendar year of wearing nothing but a single pair of Tom’s shoes.
Froehlich got the idea in February of 2013 when he attended a conference for young Christians. “I went to this conference called ‘Jubilee,’” Froehlich said.
“This guest speaker named Jeff Schinabarger wrote a book called ‘More or Less’ which is all about giving generously, and when you figure out what is enough, then whatever is above that you can give generously.”
For Froehlich, what he had enough of was shoes. “It hit me that I have to find room in my closet to fit all my shoes and I don’t think I’ve ever worn out a pair,” Froehlich said. “I even look for excuses to get new pairs.”
That was where he created the idea of trying to go an entire year wearing only a single pair of shoes. First he had to decide which kind of shoe he was willing to spend an entire year in.
“There was a Tom’s table at the conference,” Froehlich said. “I figured that I could go and buy any old industrial pair of boots and they’ll last for a year, but then I thought that I wanted to find the simplest and most basic shoe that kids in Africa might be wearing – just an everyday average shoe.”
A pair of Toms arrived in the mail March 4, 2013, and he set about wearing them everywhere. Only once did he ever wear another pair of shoes and that was for his summer job which required that he wear non-slip shoes.
Besides this one bump in the experiment he stayed as true as he could to the spirit of what he was trying to accomplish, even when it became difficult. “It was summer when I started, so it was pretty easy,” Froehlich said.
As the months went by, he started to wear down his shoes further and further until holes started developing, which was not ideal during winter.
“I like being a fashionable person, but I don’t like having numb feet, so it was either have cold feet or look stupid, so I chose to look stupid,” Froehlich said. “If you saw me around campus this winter, I was the guy with Kroger bags on my feet because they were waterproof.”
But the shoes represented something much bigger than just one college student’s reliance on fashionable footwear. His whole experiment wasn’t sponsored by Toms or any other organization; he simply wanted to escape the urge that pushed him to buy more and more shoes.
The whole experiment was set to question what was really important in his life and he encouraged others to take a look at themselves and what really mattered through a simple object such as shoes.
“I wanted people to realize the excess in their lives,” he said.Through his family, church, and many others, he found a calling in the experience to help others.
“I started getting passionate about those who didn’t have shoes, so I started a shoe drive,” Froehlich said. “I didn’t really know what I was doing, but luckily I had a lot of people to help me out.”
He wanted to use his ongoing experiment to help other people experience how valuable a pair of shoes can be, and how they shouldn’t be taken for granted.
“I challenged people to go into their closets and count the number of shoes they had and donate a dollar for each one,” Froehlich said.
“For my family, a family of five, we had 104 pairs of shoes. A brand new pair of [Toms] shipped and delivered is $25, so that bought four pairs of shoes.”
Over the course of a year Froehlich set out to work to bring shoes to people in the local community that didn’t have any, or didn’t have a quality pair.
“In total we raised over 1100 pairs of shoes and over $800 to help people all across the world,” Froehlich said.
Now that the experiment is over, people have been asking him what he should do now, and he’s not really sure.
“For me, I got to realize what was enough in my life,” he said, reflecting on his final thoughts of his year.
Froehlich admitted that although it was a valuable experience, he wasn’t planning on putting the same pair of ratty and smelly shoes on any time soon. He is ready to go back to appreciating warm shoes during the tail-end of winter.
Despite their tremendous odor, he couldn’t imagine throwing the shoes out. “I’ll keep them in a shadow box or something,” he said, “so I’ll always remember.”
abutts@capital.edu
