FORTVILLE — Shelli Albright’s first day of work included meeting with colleagues, settling in at her desk … and being chosen by the Sock Man to lead prayer.
Jimmy Stone, also known as the Sock Man around town, had stopped by. He typically does on Mondays, Albright said, and prays with the staff. That day someone asked him who should lead the prayer that week.
“He said, ‘It’s her turn,’” Albright recalls. “That was, literally, the first thing I did as a staff person, was have prayer — because Jimmy said it was my turn.”
Stone attends Fortville Christian Church, but he is known to a number of congregations in the Vernon Township area.
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“I think that every church in town helps Jimmy in one way or another,” said Erin Flick of Fortville Christian’s food pantry.
Week to week, Stone makes his rounds at the area churches and businesses where donation boxes are out for him, holding donated new and gently used socks.
Stone rounds them up and takes them to a couple of area church food pantries, where they’re available for people picking up food.
“I don’t count. I just throw ‘em in there,” he said.
Stone estimates he’s been gathering socks for about eight years, starting with a box placed at Fortville Family Practice. The number of boxes placed has grown to include several businesses and churches. As he gathers and delivers socks, which he does year-round, he frequently is sporting a Sock Man shirt.
“We made him a shirt that says ‘Sock Man,’ and he wears it often,” Flick said.
Before he became the Sock Man, before he was of retirement age, he was a manual laborer, he said. His earliest work experiences were in farming, helping raise tobacco, corn and hay in Kentucky.
That’s where he spent his younger years before he moved north to Hancock County with his mother in the 1980s. These days he lives with his brother in the McCordsville area.
He remembers a pair of socks he received from Shepherd Community sometime in the 1980s. Later, thinking people coming to food pantries in need of food might also need socks, he began gathering them in hopes of sharing that warmth with others.
“I think Jimmy just found a place that he could serve,” said Sara Edwards, office administrator at Fortville Church of the Nazarene. “He’s a good guy.”
Jimmy stops by the Nazarene church through the week, too. Edwards prays with him when he asks her to. Recently he stopped by with a hand-drawn map detailing the stops he makes.
He makes those stops is a van that used to belong to Edwards’ mother; when she stopped driving, Stone’s car had broken down, so the Edwardses sold him her van for $100. He made a thank-you recording.
She said people of the church — where her husband, the Rev. Phil Edwards, is lead pastor — have embraced giving socks to Stone’s ministry.
“He lives to do this,” Sara Edwards said. “This is just a ministry he has taken on his own. … He is definitely a part of Fortville.
“The pantries all know him. … I just think he’s a special gift.”
