Volunteer Barb Pedigo helps Teven Brent Jr. try on a new pair of socks. (TFP Photo by Laurie Bertke)
Shoe giveaway helps kids start school on the right foot
TOLEDO –Tequilla Walker said her husband arrived by 5 a.m. to nab a spot at the front of the line for Shoe Fest, an annual event in East Toledo that provides free shoes to children. By the time she joined him with their seven grandchildren 150 minutes later, the line of families already stretched down the block of Sixth St., in front of Helping Hands of St. Louis on July 27.
Their diligence paid off a little after 8 a.m. when a round of applause from a crowd of volunteers welcomed the family as the first customers of the day. Filing into a row of folding chairs, the children sat down across from smiling volunteers who gently washed their feet in buckets of soapy water. After drying them off, the volunteers helped each child try on a new pair of socks and tennis shoes.
This year, the event’s organizers were prepared to give away 1,600 pairs of shoes from toddler size 10 to adult size 10 in three hours — double the number they had on hand last year.
While they worked, the helpers chatted with the children about their summers and the upcoming school year. Many were rewarded with beaming smiles, hugs and even a few tears of joy from their young customers, some of whom have never owned new shoes.
Most of our kids that are coming here are coming from the lowest economic with the highest challenges, and we just want to help them be ready for school,
Charlotte Perlaky, an event organizer
Shoes are one of the most expensive back-to-school items for families to purchase, and organizers say this item can have a major impact on self-esteem.
“They say that kids don’t go to school because they don’t have shoes, or the right shoes,” said Theresa Bugelholl, who coordinated the first event 11 years ago. Even though she now lives in Florida, she returns each year to help with Shoe Fest and has watched it steadily grow from its first year when they distributed 250 pairs of shoes to neighborhood kids.
Families wait in line at the 11th annual Shoe Fest at Helping Hands of St. Louis in Toledo. 1,600 shoes were given away to kids. (TFP Photo/Laurie Bertke)
Adult and teen volunteers kept the long line moving as they measured feet and shuttled bins of water and pairs of shoes between the fitting stations. Families enjoyed games, balloon animals and a deejay while they waited, lending the event a carnival atmosphere. Along with shoes, the young guests left with free school supplies, books and other giveaways.
The event is run on a first-come, first-served basis, but if a child is in line and they run out of the size that a child needs, Perlaky says volunteers take down their name and size and deliver the pair of shoes to the family’s home later.
While Helping Hands of St. Louis outreach center is a ministry of Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Toledo, shoes donations came from a broad coalition that included Soles4Souls, secular organizations, individuals, Catholic parishes, Protestant congregations and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
Some individuals, like Perlaky, buy shoes on clearance throughout the year and store them for the occasion. “We have an area in our attic that just constantly has shoes,” she said.
Beyond the symbolic connection to the Biblical story of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples as an example of service, Perlaky explained the goal of the event is to build relationships. “We just want all the kids to know that they have a system of people who believe in them and want them to be everything they want to be.
“We just don’t want them to ever feel like they should give up.”
Volunteer Emma Branford, left, measures the foot of Mecka’Rose Oldham-Howell, 3, while her brother Karl’James, and grandmother Barbara Lewis, look on. (TFP Photo/Laurie Bertke)
Clothing is repaired during a session with the Toledo Repair Cafe at the Kent Library Branch. (TSP Photo/Scott W. Grau)
Fixing more than appliances at the Toledo Repair Café
TOLEDO – It’s my favorite digital camera of all time, and Kodak stopped making it years ago. So, when my Kodak EasyShare stopped functioning properly I was desolate. Wonderful photographs and happy memories were created with that camera. An artist will tell you there’s nothing quite like their favorite paintbrush and when it’s broken or lost, things are never quite the same. That’s how I feel about my dark blue digital camera.
“Junk it!” was the most common advice I was given when looking for a way to fix my camera, but why should I throw it away? I didn’t want to give up on it when it seemed like a simple fix, but who fixes cameras in the Toledo area nowadays? Not many I discovered.
While searching for a new lightweight digital camera, I discovered they are complicated and costly. My simple-to-use, inexpensive digital camera has gone the way of the passenger pigeon. People tell me to use my cell phone camera for photography projects, but a phone is a phone in my opinion. I want a dedicated camera with a decent variable lens that takes a crisp picture and not just blurry selfies.
Volunteers work on projects during a repair session with the Toledo Repair Cafe at the Kent Library Branch. (TFP Photo/Scott W. Grau)
Imagine my surprise when I discovered a group who understood my plight and feelings in regards to my cherished camera, and they’re located right here in Toledo – and coming to a library branch near you.
The Toledo Repair Café meets in community rooms at various Toledo/Lucas County Public Library branches on the last Saturday of the month (barring holidays) from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. I attended their most recent event on Saturday at the Kent Branch at 3101 Collingwood Blvd.
Local fix-it experts (some young, some not so young) freely donate their time and talents to this co-ministry of Park United Church of Christ and the Baha’is of Sylvania. Their partnerships also include the Toledo/Lucas County Public Library, Northwest State Community College and the MultiFaith Council of NW Ohio.
Tim Casida, who works on computers and other related electronics, tried his best to repair my digital camera. A tiny plastic piece on the battery compartment door had snapped off, keeping the batteries from making consistent contact with the mechanism that turns the camera off and on. It’s the equivalent of a broken fingernail. Why should we fill our landfills with items that could be repaired, repurposed or reused?
TOLEDO, OH – JULY 27: John Krochmalny, left, and Garry Batts, right, smile as the light bulb turns on after repairing a lamp during a repair session with the Toledo Repair Cafe at the Kent Library Branch. (TFP Photo/Scott W. Grau)
Tim brought along a variety of old cameras to cannibalize parts from, but none quite fit. He thinks he might have an exact match lying somewhere in his attic, so he said to come back next time and see if it will work for my camera. In the meantime, Ol’ Blue is rubber-banded together and works well enough with a few glitches. But not everything can be saved—like the broken motor in our year-old UV fan—so it helps to maintain a realistic view.
The Toledo Repair Café is the brainchild of John Krochmalny and Gary Batts. According to Krochmalny, the repair café movement started in 2009 in Europe. There are now an estimated 3,191 repair cafés worldwide from the United States to the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, India and Japan.
The folks of the Toledo Repair Café do more than just fix cameras; they also repair lamps, fans, small appliances, bicycles, jewelry and clothing items. They help fix holes in our hearts, too. Krochmalny noted that our need for community and fellowship is sometimes lacking in this post-COVID world. The café is a place for folks to come together and enjoy a casual conversation over coffee and cookies while getting a prized possession fixed.
Krochmalny related a story from their first event that emphasizes their mission:
A woman came in with a very old piece of jewelry. It was broken and needed some links repaired so she could wear it again. She cried with joy as the repaired piece was handed back to her. She told us it had been given to her by her late husband who had passed away the week before. We mended more than just a piece of jewelry that day.
Yes, they did.
This is the angle I want to take with my column here at the Toledo Free Press. I’m calling my column Surviving and Thriving in Toledo. Each story will focus on a particular person or group/organization that is making a difference in how Toledo-area residents are surviving and thriving and helping their neighbors do the same.
Some topics I’d like to cover are food preservation and gathering tips, urban gardening, health care accessibility, housing, finding affordable clothing, self-help groups, and mutual aid groups. I’m open to hear about whatever you think would be of benefit to the community.
If you have an idea for a person or a group you think should be featured, please let me know. I’d love to share their story. Together we’ll create a record of the ingenuity and graciousness of Northwest Ohioans for future generations to learn from and possibly follow.
There’s no use in denying it—life isn’t easy nowadays. But if we come together and show each other hints and tips to get through these tough times, it will be worth it. Like the woman who thought her cherished piece of jewelry—and the precious memories surrounding it—were lost to her forever, we could find ourselves pleasantly surprised when a neighbor gives us a hand up and helps us along the road of life.
We can do more than survive, Toledo. We can thrive.
Click here to learn more about the movement and how you can even start your own repair café. You can also follow them on Facebook at Toledo Repair Café and online, where they have a calendar page with information on their upcoming fix-it events.
TFP board treasurer Sean Nestor, left, and founder and publisher Tom Pounds stand by the resurgence of the nonprofit online newsroom. The office above the Blarney Irish Pub is now open for business, and the website will launch soon. (TFP Photo/Lori King)
Toledo Free Press returns as nonprofit newsroom
TOLEDO – Like so many Toledoans, I was heartbroken when the Toledo Free Press announced it would close its doors in April 2015.
During its tenure, the Free Press published independent, award-winning local journalism that never failed to give our city something to be proud of. While maintaining a “glass half-full” outlook, the paper still engaged in important investigative work and facilitated deep conversations on crucial topics, acting as a lively town square for Toledo.
It was some time in 2018 when I noticed the TFP website was gone – and with it 10 years of local news. The ethereal nature of important information in our much-heralded information age struck me, and I felt something had to be done. Through my friend Sarah, I was able to reach out to Tom Pounds, founder and publisher of the Toledo Free Press, who agreed to embark on a project of restoring the Free Press archives with me.
After a few conversations at The Blarney (and a few beers), we decided to use my nonprofit Toledo Integrated Media Education to put the Free Press archives back online. Thanks to a team of volunteers, we succeeded in creating a new website in 2019 that restored public access to much of the paper’s content spanning an entire decade. Writers could once again share links to stories they had written, and citizens could once again share our articles through social media.
Naturally, this led to deeper conversations about the state of journalism and what we could do about it. Approximately 1,800 communities across the U.S. no longer have local newsrooms, and thousands of others operate with a skeleton crew producing little of substance. This decline has been a crisis for our citizenry, resulting in increased polarization, lower voter turnout, higher rates of corruption, and more government waste. Is this a state of affairs we can accept for Toledo?
Our civic patriotism led us to decide it was necessary to revive the Toledo Free Press – not simply as a museum that houses the news from years past, but as an active, muckraking pillar of the community. What followed is several years of planning and fundraising that has brought us to the moment we now find ourselves in. Through our 501c3 nonprofit, Toledo Integrated Media Education, we are prepared to ensure that Toledo has a quality local newsroom for years to come.
TFP publisher and founder Tom Pounds cleans his office above the Blarney Irish Pub. (TFP Photo/Lori King)
We’re proud to stand at the precipice of a new Toledo Free Press; one that understands and takes advantage of digital publication, embraces multimedia content delivery, and leverages the emerging model of nonprofit journalism as a way forward. Our mission, then as now, is to provide high-quality independent local journalism that is accessible to the public. That means no paywalls, no partisanship, and an exclusive focus on local news.
We are committed to being Toledo’s independent news outlet – one that can provide comprehensive coverage with an editorial staff that has the freedom to speak truth to power. We believe, as the authors of the First Amendment did, that a free press is vital to the preservation of our democracy.
If you share our beliefs, please help us carry out our mission by signing up for our newsletter, and by supporting us financially.
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Forcing students to live on campus: Expensive, violates rights, state law
Most of Ohio’s state universities require students to live on campus. For example, BGSU requires most freshmen and sophomores to live on campus. They can claim an exemption if they live with their parents within 50 miles of campus.
Two narratives explain why many state universities require students to live on campus. Most universities justify these mandates by stating that living on campus improves the likelihood of academic success. Yet, the research literature does not uniformly find that living on campus increases the grades of students.
Ohio University’s Distinguished Professor of Economics Richard Vedder states that on-campus living requirements represent “monopolists” practices since they require students to purchase housing as a condition of enrollment. Student housing has become a multi-billion-dollar industry with private equity firms profiting handsomely.
On-campus living mandates not only cost students dearly, but these mandates also violate Ohio law and likely infringe several constitutional rights.
An Ohio Revised Code (3345.47) states that:
“No state university shall require a student to live in on-campus student housing, if the student lives within twenty-five miles of the campus.”
The condition in this statute relates to where the student lives, not where the parent lives. Since almost all college students are legally adults, BGSU should exempt students based on where the student lives – not where the student’s parents live. It may be wise for many young adults to live on campus or with a parent – but state universities have no business mandating this.
The First Amendment has been interpreted to include the right to associate (or to not associate) with others for religious or expressive purposes. It is well known that on many campuses, many students feel the need to self-sensor on hot-button issues. A touchy issue today is the conflict in Gaza. It is reasonable to expect that some observant Jews would feel threatened for their physical safety if they were forced to live on campus. Yet, the policies at most of Ohio’s state universities would require them to live in an environment where they have good reason to feel unsafe.
Contrary to popular belief, dorms are not necessarily safe places for all students (the vast majority of campus sexual assaults occur in the dorms). The Second Amendment has been interpreted to allow adults to keep a gun in their home for self-protection. State universities should not be allowed to mandate that students make their “homes” in a dorm, while simultaneously prohibiting weapons for self-protection in the dorms. I am not advocating for guns on campus – I am advocating that state universities should not be allowed to mandate that students make their “home” in a dorm while prohibiting these same students from possessing weapons in their dorm-room “home”.
The Fourth Amendment states that the “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.” Yet, the housing policies at most universities allow housing staff to search student dorm rooms with or without cause. As with gun rights, if a state university wants the right to search students’ rooms without warrants, then they should not require those students to live on campus.
The penalty for not living on campus is often a fine rather than an academic penalty. If a student chooses to not live on campus (in violation of an on-campus living mandate), the cumulative fine can be as high as $30,000. Yet, a similarly situated student in Ohio would face no penalty if that student’s parents lived within 25 miles of campus. The Eight Amendment prohibits excessive fines, and the Fourteenth Amendment requires equal treatment. These large fines seem to be both unequal, arbitrary and excessive.
Living on campus may be desirable for many students. Even so, it is expensive – often financed by student debt. Student debt in the US is nearly $1.8 trillion. Ohio’s state universities should not be allowed to increase the cost of college education while violating state law and the constitutional rights of students by mandating that students live on campus.
(The opinions expressed are his and not those of Utoledo)
Dr. Douglas Oliver is an attorney and an Emeritus Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Toledo.
Author Nicole Ryan stands ready to sign her novel The Very First Night during a signing at Finch & Fern Book Co.
Nicole Ryan’s contemporary romance with a Swifty twist
SYLVANIA – Nicole Ryan’s contemporary romance with a Swifty twist
None of us escapes this life without some level of regret accompanied by the sense that, if it were possible, going back in time would fix everything. That’s what local author Nicole Ryan explores in her third novel, The Very First Night, a contemporary romance with a time traveling protagonist.
“Kat wakes up five years in the past, and she really wants to make it work with this person,” says Ryan. “We think about a lot of things through rose-colored glasses, and it’s a story of self-growth and self-worth. Those are huge themes in the book, just because I think that impacts all of our relationships with ourselves and other people.”
This novel is a departure from Ryan’s earlier work (her Just Peachy series concludes with its third novel being released in March 2025) in that it is considered a new adult novel. The characters (at least post-time-travel) are college-aged. To tap into the mindset of an undergrad like Kat Marritt, Ryan drew from her own experiences navigating life and love in her early 20s.
“I did take a lot of inspiration from my relationship past, especially Kat’s relationship with Elijah…the aspects of it that weren’t totally healthy,” she said.
I wanted to give it the care that it deserved, and I think, as a writer, you’re always growing. I wanted to have a few [books] under my belt before I tackled something so personal.
The initial inspiration came to Ryan while listening to Taylor Swift’s Red album. In her song “The Very First Night,” Swift sings, “I wish I could fly. I’d pick you up and we’d go back in time. I’d write this in the sky. I miss you like it was the very first night.” That’s where Ryan first thought about time travel for a protagonist who is having a hard time moving on from the one that got away.
Nicole signs autographs at her signing party.
A Swiftie to the core, Ryan’s release party at Finch & Fern Book Co. included an Eras costume competition and other references to Taylor Swift lore. What she hopes for Swifties and contemporary romance lovers alike is that they’ll come away feeling self-assured when they read The Very First Night.
“Don’t settle. I think we often think to ourselves that we put so much time into this person, that if you let it go, it was all for nothing. But holding onto that person is what could be holding you back from meeting the right person.”
Learn more about Nicole Ryan’s work at nicoleryanbooks.com, and follow her on Instagram @nicoleryanbooks for the latest news on her work. She also has a Facebook group for her readers called Nicole Ryan’s Peaches for her fans.
About the author:
Favorite romantic gesture: I’m a big acts of service kind of person, and gift giving in the sense of “I saw this and thought of you.” The small gestures.
Top date night in Toledo: Nagoya, which is where we went the night we got engaged.
Favorite writers: K.A. Tucker and Anna Huang.
What are you reading right now? The first Zodiac Academy book.
Best book of all time in your opinion? The Simple Wild by K.A. Tucker.
While writing, music or no music? Music, but no lyrics.
Do you write everyday? Toward the beginning of a book, not so much, but when I’m close to a deadline, for sure.
Best heroine of all time: Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games.
Favorite romcom movie: Something Borrowed.
What you do to get inspired when you’re in a writing rut: Read. I find that reading other people’s stories gets my gears going a little bit more.
Matt Schroeder, University of Toledo interim president, speaks during a press conference to announce the addition of women’s rowing as a varsity sport on July 24, 2024 at the Glass Pavilion in Toledo. (TFP Photo/Scott W. Grau)
TOLEDO – The University of Toledo announced the addition of women’s rowing as a varsity sport during a press conference on July 24 at the Glass City Pavilion.
Toledo Women’s Rowing will be the university’s 17th varsity sport. The team will compete at the NCAA Division I level and in the Mid-American Conference, which is adding women’s rowing to its lineup of sports. Competition begins in the 2025-2026 school year.
Toledo will compete against Eastern Michigan and UMass, as well as affiliate members Delaware, High Point and Temple.
A full squad will include approximately 50-60 student athletes.
Bryan B. Blair, University of Toledo vice president and director of athletics, told the audience that “we are going to be adding high-achieving young ladies who will be adding so much to our campus and the vibrancy in our athletic department.”
“Today is about showing an example of an athletic department that’s not afraid to be bold,” said University of Toledo vice president and director of athletics Bryan B. Blair. “We want to be uniquely Toledo and take advantage of all this great community and university has to offer.
“We are going to be adding high-achieving young ladies who will be adding so much to our campus and the vibrancy in our athletic department,” added Blair.
“We have a culture of excellence that we want to extend to this new program, and we have a department that’s ready to embrace the addition of rowing. It gives us the opportunity to pursue a MAC Championship in another sport, which we intend to do like we do in our other 16 sports.”
Toledo Women’s Rowing will practice and compete on the Maumee River and will utilize the Philip LeBoutillier, Jr. Memorial Boathouse in International Park in downtown Toledo. The boathouse is owned by Metroparks Toledo and is operated by the Toledo Rowing Foundation.
A search for the coach is ongoing.
Toledo Women’s Rowing will practice and compete on the Maumee River and will utilize the Philip LeBoutillier, Jr. Memorial Boathouse in International Park in downtown Toledo.
