Lisa Hallett knows that she was married to an amazing man. She also knows that anyone who had the chance to meet Army Cpt. John Hallett could tell that he was the kind of guy who’d give the coat off of his back or the shoes off of his feet to someone in need. “John would do nice things just because it was the right thing to do,” Lisa Hallett said. “His moral compass was always pointing in the right direction.” Hallett died as he lived — trying to give to others. On August 25, 2009, the 30-year-old and three other soldiers from the 1-17 Infantry Regiment, 5-2 Stryker Brigade were killed in Afghanistan after their vehicle struck an improvised explosive device. This was Hallett’s second deployment. He’d only been gone six weeks. In that time, his wife had given birth to their third child, Heidi — a baby he would never get the chance to meet. Through it all, Lisa Hallett holds tight to her husband’s memory and is proud of what he was doing when the unthinkable happened.
“John died on a goodwill mission. He was helping people,” she said. And while John Hallett may not be physically here, his wife said she knows that there is another goodwill mission that he wants to accomplish — to get shoes to children in Afghanistan. One of Hallett’s fellow officers, Major Jose Ocasio, had started the effort to gather shoes for children living in the mountainous regions of Afghanistan before Hallett’s untimely death. After his passing, however, Ocasio wanted to continue to do so in Hallett’s honor. Hence, the John Hallett Memorial Charity has been started.
Through the charity, donated shoes will be distributed to the children. All sizes of shoes are needed. Donors are asked to not send green shoes. And while any shoes will be accepted, dress shoes are preferred. Lisa Hallett said that dress shoes will be received more favorably by the Afghan culture because the dressier shoes look like what the elders wear and the Taliban will think that the children received a gift from a relative. If the Taliban think the shoes are gifts from Americans, the shoes are often taken and sold.
Lisa Hallett said this project is something her husband truly believed in. “John’s commitment was to help the communities of Afghanistan. Before John deployed, he was fully immersed in learning the Afghan culture, people and way of life. John went to help, not hurt. Starting this charity is a natural fit in it continues John’s mission… to help rebuild the broken communities in our world,” Hallett said. “I am grateful that Major Ocasio and his amazing wife, Kym, invited me to join them on this mission. In my very broken world, I have a way to honor John. People grieve in different ways, some are intuitive and some
grieve by doing. We can be bitter or we can be better. John’s loss is devastating, and I will always have a huge hole in my heart, in my life. But by doing this, by helping the people from the soil that John was killed, I strive to be better and not bitter, to continue John’s mission and to live a life that would make him proud,” she said. On Dec. 27, 2009, the Hallett’s would have celebrated their sixth wedding anniversary. The couple, who are originally from California, met in St Agnes Elementary School Concord . They have three children, Jackson, 4, Bryce, 2, and Heidi, six months. Lisa Hallett said this project is ironic because there are a couple of things concerning shoes that people may not know about her husband. The first thing is that one of his favorite stories is about Mahatma Gandhi. The story goes that Gandhi, who was on a speaking tour across India, was running to get onto a train. As he jumped, one of his shoes slipped off of his foot. While he tried to grab the shoe, it still ended up falling onto the train tracks. Instead of fretting about it, Gandhi took off his other shoe and tossed it also onto the tracks. When asked why he did this, it is said that he responded, “At least now if a poor person finds his way across my shoe he will soon come across its mate and end up with a good pair of shoes.” The other thing that people may not know about John Hallett was that he was always forgetting his own shoes. His wife said there were plenty of times when he just didn’t wear shoes because he’d left them at home.