Tom Costello Jr. was once afraid of homeless Americans. He said “I was so afraid that if I saw a homeless person walking down the street, I’d cross the street". That changed seven years ago after his wife, a volunteer at a homeless shelter, persuaded him to help with a holiday dinner for shelter residents. Tom Costello remembers going a store and buying socks for the residents. He knew many of them were in need of clothing. At the shelter, Costello said, he dropped a pair of socks into a bag for a woman. She asked him if she could have socks for a friend who wasn’t with her that day. He gave her another pair. “She started to cry and told me that nobody had ever given me socks before,” Costello said. “Then she reached out and gave me a hug.” That experience at the shelter helped Costello end his fear of the homeless. It also led him to set up a group called The Joy of Sox. It borrows from The Joy of Sex, the name of a popular book in the 1970s.