Dr. Weinert remembers the stories his mother used to tell him about growing up poor as one of 15 kids in Hamtramck, MI.
Dr. Weinert’s grandparents couldn’t afford to buy new shoes for each of their children, so Diane Motyka Weinert often had poorly fitting hand-me-downs. Sometimes, she had no shoes at all.
“When she was growing up a lot of times they didn’t have shoes to wear, and they would wear hand-me-down shoes that were passed down with holes in them,” Dr. Weinert recalls. “They all grew up with a lot of foot problems.” It can also be emotionally damaging to not own a pair of shoes that fit.
