Lataine Smith has had polio since she was 2 years old. She has never known life without metal braces, crutches or shoes made to fit the braces.

She has never walked in a pair of high heels, much less fancy sandals.

Yet, the mother of three - her eldest child died due to spina bifida - has a dream. And her dream has been to make sure that people who are in need of shoes get the opportunity to have shoes.

As part of the national program, Soles4Souls, Smith has been the driving force behind the organization of the fundraising project at First Baptist Church in Hogansville.

“I am serving as the Women on Mission facilitator, and I was looking through the missions magazine and saw this project where groups were getting together shoes for people in disaster situations.” she said.

Smith did some research and found that one of the national distribution centers for Soles4Souls is in nearby Roanoke, Ala.

“I thought that was ideal, because it is not that far away, and I knew that we would be delivering our donations ourselves,” she said.

For more than a year, the church has been collecting shoes, old and new, but on Nov. 22, Smith asked her church, as part of a Thanks4Giving event, to bring “their best.”

Smith, who is semiretired and serves as an English as a second language tutor for a number of Korean residents of LaGrange, said, “They did. We collected 61 shoes in one day. They brought their tennis shoes, their Sunday best. Some brought new ones, some brought old ones and even some gave the ones right off their feet.”

Smith, though, wasn’t sure about giving any shoes.

“I have always had ugly shoes. It is hard to find shoes that fit around the braces,” she said.

Pointing to her black tennis shoes, she said: “These are boys’ shoes. I had to cut them to make them fit.”

She remembered a pair of shoes that she had confiscated from her daughter.

“My daughter had purchased a pair of gold heels. She wasn’t going to wear them, and was going to put them in the trash or take them to a Goodwill,” Smith recalled.

Smith, tears slowly coming down her face, paused.

“I saw them and how pretty they were, and thought I might just keep them. I knew that I would never be able to wear them, but in the back of my mind, I had a hope, a dream.”

“I am not sad about my situation and I have never wished anything else for my life. I have never known anything else but these crutches. They have never stopped me from doing anything. … I remember when I was pregnant, walking around, how people would stop and stare,” Smith smiled, wiping the corners of her eyes with a tissue.

“All of my best shoes are specially made for me, so I couldn’t give those, so I thought about those gold heels.

“If I can’t wear them, then someone else can enjoy them, and maybe they will bring joy to them in their time of need.”

First Baptist Church in Hogansville is not the only church in the community that participates in the Soles4Souls project, Smith said.

“I am not sure how many, but I know they do. It is a worthwhile project,” she said.

Next year, Smith hopes that other churches and organizations will adopt Soles4Souls has a mission project, and that “we will have collected so many that I will have to have someone go with me in a dump truck.”

n Soles4Souls began after Wayne Elsey saw a picture of a single shoe washing up on the beach after the 2004 tsunami hit Southeast Asia, and when Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast a year later. Elsey and a group of friends - other executives in the footwear industry - got together a quarter of a million shoes to victims in devastated areas. According to the nonprofit organization’s motto, they are just “changing the world one pair at a time.”

For more, visit www. soles4souls.org, or contact Smith at lataine.smith@ att.net.

Becky Holland can be reached at bholland@ lagrangenews.com and at (706)884-7311, Ext. 229.