FARGO – Erin Bertel has an idea of what it’s like to be homeless.
For six months this past year, she and her family hopped from house to house, staying in the homes of friends and family members who were traveling or wintering elsewhere until they were able to find a place of their own, she said.
“It puts you in a really vulnerable place,” said the 39-year-old Fargo woman. “We stopped entertaining. My kids stopped having friends over. We were literally living out of suitcases. My daughter wanted to quit cheerleading. It really does a lot for your dignity and your self-confidence. You feel lesser of a person.”
Their home was part of a flood buy-out, and she said they had to move out sooner than expected.
“We thought we were going to be able to rent our house back through the end of April,” she said. “That’s not the way things worked out.”
They had to move out of their home Jan. 7, and Bertel said they hadn’t found a home they could rent before then.
“We found ourselves really at the mercy of friends and family,” she said.
While it was an incredibly difficult experience, Bertel said it was also humbling, and she became more appreciative of the things she did have.
During that time, Bertel met a chronically homeless man named Kyle in a Fargo park. She asked him what she could do for him, and he told her that he knew where to find food and shelter, but what he really needed was a new pair of socks.
“It’s that feeling of restoring hope when you put on a new pair of socks and it conforms to your foot,” Bertel said. “He said something is better than nothing, but putting on a used pair of socks can sometimes hurt your dignity.”
It’s so simple, Bertel said, but one of the most in-demand and least-donated items. So she decided to do something about it by reaching out to a national Philadelphia-based organization, The Joy of Sox, which provides socks for the homeless.
“What this is about is reigniting compassion for people,” Bertel said. “What this is about is transferring fear and turning it into hope. Hope can come in any form, in something as simple and as silly as a pair of socks.”
The
Joy of Sox
volunteers are called “Sock Angels,” and Bertel said she is considered “the Sock Angel of North Dakota,” meaning she is the chairwoman and organizer for the state.
Bertel has held sock hops, sock drives and has been speaking about the cause to raise awareness and socks. She has done sock distributions throughout the state. In October, Bertel, who is a registered nurse, partnered with 20 colleagues and held a foot-washing station where they washed the feet of 200 people and gave away 800 pairs of socks. Some people, she said, had their feet wrapped in newspaper because they had nothing else to keep them warm.
“The needs are just so great,” she said. “They don’t have the sock drawer that we have at home, so when they get a pair, they literally wear them out.”
Bertel recently won the title of Mrs. North Dakota International 2015. Her husband encouraged her to compete, and she did it as a way to further her cause because contestants in that pageant system choose a platform to advocate.
“I’m trying to use my story to inspire and educate others,” she said. “Once you turn your perspective into a servant’s heart, it really doesn’t feel like work at all.”
Bertel, who is not currently working outside of her pageant responsibilities and work with The Joy of Sox, is a mother of three children, ages 21, 17 and 11, and she’s involved her kids in her cause.
Bertel lists her sock drives and other events on her Facebook page,
www.facebook.com/NdJoyofSox
. The best socks to donate, she said, are men’s tube socks because they don’t have a heel so anyone of any age can wear them.
“The enemy here is not the homeless. It’s homelessness,” she said. “Socks provide comfort, warmth, dignity and above all, hope.”
Her Voice is a weekly article about women in or from our area and how they make an impact on the world around them. If you know someone SheSays should feature in HerVoice, email Tracy Frank at tfrank@forumcomm.com .
