Socks for Seniors seeks Oklahoma City coordinator

“It started about 12 years ago and it grew slowly in different places, locally originally, and then about three years ago I wanted to make it a national program so we started contacting folks in local areas all over the country to do it,” said program director Jamie Coyne. “It's grown into about 250 cities since then.”

Coyne began collecting socks with his wife, Kitty, in Columbus, Ohio, in 2000. Within a few years, the program had started to spread.

Two of those 250 cities it has spread to are Tulsa and Haskell, but Coyne decided it was time to have a collection location in the heart of Oklahoma.

“The person that doesn't know about the program, a pair of socks can seem kind of insignificant,” Coyne said. “The truth is, it started simply because I was doing a music program in senior communities — nursing homes, assisted living centers — and one day there was a lady who normally was very upbeat, but seemed kind of down and when I asked what the problem was she said, ‘You know if I just had a warm pair of socks, my feet are freezing.'

“I gave her a pair of socks and it made her day, it was in a dining room setting and so other people wanted socks, too. You can't just give to one. So the next time I went back I took socks for everybody and it just grew from there.”

Coyne said it not only positively impacts the seniors of each community, it also warms the hearts of people collecting the socks.