Four bins full, no fewer than 1,500 pairs of brightly colored socks are in the hallway of the UMCG, in front of the Beatrix Children’s Hospital. People are already looking at it with a smile. This is also the case with Josefien van de Klundert.
She is a patient at the children’s hospital and enthusiastic about the large donation of socks. “Very nice. That makes it a little happier for the people lying here. They get nice socks and can cheer up.” Josefien gets the first pair of socks, one with cheerful flamingos.
The socks were collected during Hidde van Tarel’s funeral. The nineteen-year-old Sudosa player from Assen died last month of a brain hemorrhage.
A fanatic volleyball player, sports enthusiast, but above all a colorful young man, says his father Peter. “Hidde was a bomb of energy. When he came in, someone really came in. Hidde loved color and had that in his character. So that just suits him very well.”
During volleyball matches, Hidde always has brightly colored motifs on his socks, often in two different sports shoes. When mother Mirjam shows photos on her mobile phone, you see a boy who always wears a lot of bright colors, and therefore those cheerful socks. “Hidde was an avid wearer of Happy Socks,” says Peter.
“In fact, he always wore Happy Socks, even when playing volleyball. That apparently stood out. When Hidde became ill and ended up in the hospital, his team was playing a tournament. Those boys had to do something with their sadness and all started wearing Happy Socks. And in a few days, all the teams were wearing Happy Socks. That made us think about not asking for flowers at the funeral, but for Happy Socks.”
The socks are pouring in, including brightly colored socks from other brands. Once the socks are home, they lie on a large pile in the living room. They often still have personal messages attached to them, they take them off and read them.
Then everything goes into large one hundred liter containers and to the Beatrix Children’s Hospital in Groningen, where Hidde previously came as a result of a heart problem, which has nothing to do with his premature death.
“This is very nice for us,” says Peter. “In this way we get something beautiful out of a sad situation. Hidde was a connector. Someone who had a lot of conversations with people, even if he did not know them. Hidde liked to make contact with people and liked to make them cheerful. And we hope in this way to contribute to the cheerfulness of children in a difficult situation.”
The children’s hospital is happy with it, says Eline from the hospital’s Children’s Advisory Council. She was a patient herself and still has many of the little gifts she received during that time. “That makes such a big impact. Such a small gift can make your day so much better, so I think this will do really well.”