BY TINA L. SCOTT
EDITOR
At Trinity Merrill Lutheran School, third grade teacher, Miss Sallie Kamps, and her students decided that instead of doing a Christmas gift exchange, they would collect socks and make a donation to an organization called Hannah’s Socks. Hannah’s Socks is located in Ohio and started when a four-year-old girl helping her mother in a soup kitchen on Thanksgiving Day in 2004 noticed a homeless man whose toes were showing through his worn shoes. He didn’t have any socks, and she asked her mom if she could give him hers. The rest, as they say, is history. Hannah and her family went shopping for socks to distribute to the homeless shelters in the area. In so doing, Hannah’s parents, Doris and Vic Turner, learned new socks and undergarments are two of the most needed items at shelters.
They created a non-profit to help. Hannah’s Socks, named after the little girl with the big heart for those in need, was created with the goal of addressing that problem. The first year they collected and donated 100 pairs of socks in the Toledo, Ohio, area.
Today, nearly 20 years later, Hannah’s Socks provides more than 55,000 pairs of socks to shelters, the homeless, victims of domestic violence, and underprivileged children annually, restoring dignity, one pair of socks at a time.
Miss Kamps sent a letter home with her students telling parents about the organization and the plan in December. “Share, care, and give a pair,” she encouraged in her letter.
Weinbrenner Shoe Company “caught wind of it,” School Principal Scott Johnson said. As a result, Weinbrenner Shoe Company decided to partner with the Trinity third graders and donated 600 pairs of socks to the cause and made a presentation of the socks to the third graders on Dec. 22, 2023.
Trinity’s third grade class collected another 60 pairs of socks, as well, and then paid to ship all 660 pairs of socks to the organization in January.