Waves of Freedom: Founder Story

This is a conversation we had with our founder, John Khadzhi, over Labor Day to talk about where JK Boots really comes from. This is the story behind everything that we build. It's the story that explains why we named a boot Liberty in the first place.

Born Under a Flag That Meant Control

John was born in southern Ukraine, close to the Black Sea, in a region called Bessarabia. He grew up in a family of believers and was raised in the church. This was in a time and place where that was dangerous to do.

The government there regulated religion. Which church you could attend, how often, and how you were allowed to practice your faith. Instead of going along with that, John's parents joined an underground church instead. This meant they had meetings in secret, a couple times a week in a random house, and always aware that what they were doing was considered an act against the state.

"They consider us like an enemy of the state," John remembers. "If they cannot control you, that means something against the state."

When John was 16 he wanted to be baptized, but he wasn't permitted. Baptism required being older and reporting to a government controlled church, submitting your information, and hoping you'd be approved. He was humiliated for believing in God at school and his father was even fired from jobs because of it.

Unable to Buy a Loaf of Bread

John also tells a story about his wife asking him to pick up bread on the way home from work. He left work early because he knew that by that time there were already lines for it. He waited for what seemed like a long time and just before he reached the front, he heard "The bread is gone. No more bread. Sorry, we're closing."

As a husband and provider, he still remembers how he felt having to walk home empty-handed unable to buy even a loaf of bread.

That's what communism does to your sense of self, John says. "The goal of communism is to erase you like an individual. You're just a brick of the building they want to build." Take away God, he explains, and you take away the foundation that freedom stands on. No God, no morality, no difference between a person and an animal. You're just a number.

What He'd Heard About America

Growing up, everything John knew about America came from Soviet propaganda. It was a country that enslaved its own people, worked children for bread, and let capitalists grind everyone down. They said slavery was just ended by the papers but in reality black and white alike were suffering like slaves.

One day, government officials confiscated his family's Bibles and religious materials. Sometime after that, someone brought home a Bible and John asked where it came from. They answered it was from the American Bible Society. John was curious about what that was and he found out more about America. He learned it was a great country where people live in freedom and liberty and everybody has a Bible that they even provide Bibles to other countries.

He couldn't believe it. A country that gave away Bibles to people who weren't even its own citizens didn't sound like what the propaganda had described.

Arriving in America

When John and his family arrived for the first time in America, he remembers people explaining their rights and responsibilities as new arrivals. John didn't understand that, rights? He asked, what kind of rights? He was an immigrant. What rights could he possibly have.

He started learning and reading the constitution and understanding how the constitution works. Not long after, John walked into an American church and saw something that surprised him: a flag inside the church.

Back home, a flag inside a place of worship meant the government was in control of that church. The flag represented control and danger, something you weren't supposed to have inside of a church. He had to ask what was going on and why it was there.

Someone explained it to him how it was different. The flag wasn't there to represent control, but it was there as a guarantee to the freedom they had. It didn't work against them but as a representation of the protection from the very thing he had fled from. 

This took time for him to learn and completely understand, but once it did, it became the center of everything.

"That's Why I Celebrate"

In John's own words: "You can make money, you can have a nice car, but if you don't have liberty to represent your life and live your life like you want to, that's a miserable life."

That's why we built the Liberty Collection. Each pair carries the word Liberty stitched into the side as a reminder, every time you lace up, of what that word actually costs some people to say out loud. On the front around the vamp, stamped into the leather: 1776, while in the counter area a 250 stamp, marking America's 250th year. John still marvels at that number. It sounds like a long time, until you compare it to where he came from, and how young and rare a nation like this really is. 

John ends with these words "How thankful I am to God for that opportunity to live within country and make the boots for you called Liberty."

Watch the full, uncut conversation with John Khadzhi below. Just his story in his own words.

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