WMBW Radio Collects 16,000
Shoes for Orphans

By Analiz González
Buckner News Service

(CHATTANOOGA, Tenn.) – WMBW Radio station in Chattanooga, Tenn. collected over 16,000 pairs of shoes and 48,000 pairs of socks for Buckner International’s Shoes for Orphan Souls drive during their month-long collection in August.

The drive concluded with a 12-hour marathon from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on August 30, when final donations were made.

WMBW held their first shoe drive in 2001. Since then, it has expanded from eight drop-off locations to more than 235. It brings in shoes from Tennessee and surrounding states. Over the past years, they have collected over 72,000 pairs of shoes and socks.

“We start the drive in May to try and get collection locations,” said Leighton LeBoeuf, station manager “This year we had 165 locations in Tennessee and surrounding states.”

LeBoeuf said that a couple of years ago, WMBW built a wall of shoes around the station to work as a visual; one year they built a bridge. But when rain fell over the boxes one year and sent employees scrambling to bring them in, they decided it was the last time they’d put together shoe monuments. But that didn’t stop donations from rolling in.

“Each year, listeners and locations start calling in the spring to see when we will start the collection,” he said. “We reach a point sometimes where we feel like we’ve reached the end. But people keep wanting to give. So until people stop wanting to make donations and showing interest, I think it’s going to be an ongoing thing for us.”

LeBoeuf said WMBW first got involved in SOS when they were asked by a local church to make a radio announcement about shoes.

But the real success in the shoe drive is due to the collection locations.

“All we do is encourage people to get involved in what we see as a great missions project,” LeBoeuf said. “That’s how it’s grown over the past six years.”

LeBoeuf also expressed his thanks to U.S. Xpress Enterprises, who has shipped shoes to the Buckner warehouse in Dallas free of charge since WMBW began the yearly drive.