AMRAP TRAINER - Key Persons
Five Belleville businessmen - Adolph Knobeloch, H.E., Leunig, J.B. Reis, James Rentchler and William Weidmann - founded Belleville Shoe Manufacturing Co. in 1904, employing 50 workers and making 50 to 75 pairs of shoes a day. Though none of the five had any experience in shoe-making, they were confident of their market and within a few years, they were selling shoes from coast to coast.
Belleville Shoe branched out into athletic shoe production, making baseball, football, golf, soccer, bowling and track shoes under the RAWLINGS brand. Baseball great Stan Musial was their best customer; he would typically go through six or seven pairs in a season. According to the New-Demo-Crat at the time, "the majority of Olympic track stars and almost all major league baseball players wore shoes made at Belleville."
Belleville Shoe was the Large Business award recipient when the Defense Logistics Agency honored 18 industry partners with their Vendor Excellence Award. The award recognizes individual businesses that have demonstrated outstanding efforts to partner with DLA and improve the agency's mission - providing supplies and services to America's war fighters - which includes excellence in superior product quality, on-time delivery, superior customer service, reliability, dependability, consistency and accuracy.
Belleville was nominated for this category based on its superior support to Defense Supply Center Philadelphia with the introduction of the hot-weather Army combat boot and temperate-weather Army combat boot.