Fifty Years of Service. One Pair of Shoes at a Time.

Johnson Funeral Home has served Southwest Louisiana families since 1976. This October, we're marking fifty years the way our founder would have wanted: by making sure no child in Lake Charles starts the school year in shoes that don't fit.

Soles for Students

On Thursday, October 15, 2026, we're hosting Soles for Students at Barbe Elementary School — a community event where every student at the school gets fitted for a brand-new pair of shoes, on us.

In the weeks leading up to the event, our team is working directly with Principal Sharon Hardy to measure every student, classroom by classroom, including kids who enrolled after the first day of school. Nobody gets left off the list. And the order includes a real assortment of styles, allowing every child to choose shoes that feel like a true expression of their personality.

Event details: Barbe Elementary School 400 Penn St, Lake Charles, LA 70601 Thursday, October 15, 2026

Families, neighbors, and media are welcome to join us. Contact us for questions.

A Legacy That Keeps Walking Forward

Every business has a founding story. Ours starts with Zeb Johnson, who grew up in Lake Charles. As a child, his feet were bigger than what most shoe stores carried, and a new pair was often out of reach entirely. Despite his own lack of basic comforts, Zeb spent most of his life caring for others, both in and out of the funeral home he started.

Johnson Funeral Home wouldn’t be here without Zeb, and we looked to his story and extensive legacy of service for inspiration on how to commemorate this significant milestone.

"Every child in this community deserves to feel supported and walk forward with confidence. Zeb taught us that. He lived it. And we intend to honor that spirit for the next 50 years." 



• Andy Hankins, CEO and funeral director at Johnson Funeral Home.
  

Making sure the people around us are taken care of before they need to ask is how we operate. Pre-planning is one of the clearest ways to carry that same care forward for your own family. It means the people you love won't have to guess what you wanted, or scramble to arrange it, during a moment that's already hard enough