Dayton Chronicle - Your Hometown News Source

A friend noticed a small pair of bronze shoes on the mantle and asked what they were. I responded with the truth: they were my baby shoes my parents had bronzed many years ago. My friend didn't believe me.

As unaccustomed as he was to what was at one time a common practice, he thought I was making a joke. I wasn't.

In the past parents sometimes had their baby's first shoes bronzed because they...