Sock serendipity

By Stephen Wilson

There’s something about being in the right place at the right time.

For Lizzie Gumula ’22 that place was her hometown of Clark Summit, Pa., on the eve before returning to campus.

She bumped into a family friend whom she calls an “anonymous angel.”

“This person is part of a group that is quietly doing good work in the Scranton area,” she says.

That work includes assembling and shipping dental kits to organizations across the globe. More locally, they have been working with Bombas, a sock and apparel brand that follows a socially responsible business model of buy-one, give-one.

This year the group received 25,000 pairs of socks from Bombas that they delivered to nearly 100 charities.

Lizzie was asked to expand the footprint and pass along socks to feet in need in Easton. She was given 250 pairs of thick and warm winter socks for children.

As a member of Alpha Phi and acting director of philanthropy for the sorority, Lizzie and her sisters had a strong relationship with Children’s Home of Easton where, before the pandemic, they visited weekly to bring some fun activities to the kids, like movie nights, yoga, tie-dying.

But Lizzie first emailed the Landis Center for Community Engagement to ensure that the socks would get to the kids in the greatest need.

Diana Larkin, volunteer coordinator at Landis, got to work and checked with local organizations. Safe Harbor, an Easton area homeless shelter, had a need. As luck would have it, those socks are also now in the hands, or on the feet, of residents at the Children’s Home.

Call it sock serendipity.