A Shoeshine Box of Memories

Some of my earliest memories are of my father’s shoeshine box. As a very young child, I thought the shoe-like thing on top of the box looked weird, and I was not really sure what it was. Perhaps that it is why it was so memorable.

A few months after my father—longtime Virginia Commonwealth University professor Walter S. Griggs Jr.—died on June 30, 2019, I found the box and decided to start using it. It had a wide array of items inside—everything from shoe polish to a softball to a track for a model train. I also noticed that the lid was no longer fully attached. I found a business that would make the most minimal repairs possible, and I retrieved it from the shop one Saturday in January 2020.

After noticing the remains of what appeared to be a Thomas Jefferson High School sticker on the side, I began to wonder about the box’s history. My father’s brother concluded that my father likely obtained the box around the time that he joined the Corps of Cadets at Thomas Jefferson High School in September 1956. Cadets were required to have shoes that were so shiny that they could see their faces in the toes, so that certainly required a lot of shoe polish. My father was initially a member of D Company and was awarded the Best Recruit (or “rat”) medal in January 1957. Yes, making sure that one’s uniform—including the shoes—was perfect was part of the criteria. He kept this medal prominently displayed for the remainder of his life along with other pins and stripes from his time in D Company and, later, C Company.

The Library of Virginia’s yearbook collection includes the Thomas Jefferson High School yearbook, The Monticello, for my father’s senior year of 1959, and I found a photo of him with his company as a Platoon Sergeant, which meant that he assisted the company’s lieutenant with training the members of the company. He attained this rank in October 1958. I also found out that he rose to the rank of Supply Sergeant according to an article in the school’s newspaper, The Jeffersonian, which is included in the Library’s Virginia Chronicle database. This meant that he was responsible for the company’s rifles.  That article and others allowed me to learn a bit more about the experiences of a Thomas Jefferson High School cadet.

I also wondered about the box itself. It had a “Griffin Shinemaster” label, so that gave me a starting place. A search of the America’s News: Historical and Current database (to which the Library subscribes) resulted in several advertisements from the Miller and Rhoads department store from 1955 to 1958, and I estimate that my father received the box sometime after the start of school in 1956 and before his spring 1959 graduation.

Best of all, these advertisements told me exactly what came with the box! To outfit it properly, I would need 4 containers of shoe polish, 2 brushes, 2 shine cloths, and 2 daubers. I already had a very nice Victor X-brand brush that I found in the box. A quick trip to the grocery store allowed me to find everything else I needed, albeit Kiwi brand and not Griffin. I also decided that one container of polish would be quite enough.  And, yes, it was not long before I decided that my shoes needed to be polished. I quickly realized that the shoe rest on top (now I know what it is!) is actually a very nice handle for carrying the box.

My father’s shoeshine box definitely had a hard life and would probably not be of interest to many others, but for me, it brings back memories of my early childhood and gives me an opportunity to learn more about an important part of my father’s high school experience. In that regard, it is worth far more than the $5.95 that was likely spent on it.