I'll be attaching two documents which illustrate this problem:

contents.doc - The original MS Word document containing the footnotes in question.

contents.odt - The resulting OO Writer document after opening contents.doc and
doing a 'save as' contents.odt.

When Writer opens contents.doc, it leaves many footnotes blank. They are
properly numbered at the bottom of each page, but the text portion of the
footnote is missing. Note footnotes #2,3,5,6,7,8,9,10,13, etc.  Also note with
footnote #12 that the text, while present, appears to be truncated in the area
where it is represented.

Since I frequently deal with theological documents (like this example) which
make extensive use of footnotes, Writer's behavior makes it impossible for me to
move completely away from MS Word in order to handle these documents which are
mailed to me by colleagues.  If footnoting were properly imported/opened, then
I'd be able to cut the apron strings from MS Word completely.