2022 marks Foot Levelers 70th year as the world leading provider of custom orthotics.

The Story of Our Founder

He wanted to enlist. Instead, he found his calling.

It was 1942, and the war was raging. A young man from Iowa, Monte H. Greenawalt, wanted to help.

But his preparations didn’t go as planned. A tainted batch of vaccinations killed many, and left Monte paralyzed. He was forced to lie in an iron lung for six months. "Monte will have to live the rest of his life as a paraplegic," the doctors told his devastated family.

A Chiropractor changed that. “They carried him in and he walked out,” his mother would recall. Monte’s path was now clear, and in 1948, he earned his degree from Lincoln Chiropractic College.

As a young doctor, Dr. Monte began to notice a pattern: patients, especially ones with foot problems, were returning to him with the same back, joint, knee and hip problems they started with—his adjustments just weren’t holding. Dr. Monte referred these patients to a podiatrist, but their problems persisted.

Dr. Monte began to experiment with orthotics, and through trial and error, developed a formula based on 16 unique measurements of the foot. Unlike off-the-shelf orthotics or even those made by podiatrists, Dr. Monte’s orthotic was designed to support all 3 arches of the foot, rather than just one. His patients began to feel better, results improved; his adjustments held longer.

Demand for his services grew. In 1952, Foot Levelers, Inc. was born.