Volunteer Spotlight: Tom Pye

Tom Pye has been our much relied upon transportation volunteer, delivering meals and groceries for several of our mobile programs. In the summer of 2022, Tom answered a call for help from Hudson Department of Heath to deliver meals to those in need. Open Table partners with Hudson to serve Brazilian immigrant families, providing culturally appropriate pantry foods to over 50 families twice a month. Volunteers like Tom meet our truck at a central location and then drive the “last-mile” to deliver the food to clients’ homes. 

In 2023, Tom again stepped up and agreed to transport food to multiple mobile programs in Lowell. Early Thursday mornings, he sets off with around 800 lbs of food in Open Table’s refrigerated van. Tom makes his first stop at Mill City Grows, a food justice organization which receives frozen meals to supplement the produce they grow in urban gardens and distribute in CSA boxes to low income Lowell residents. Tom also delivers culturally appropriate foods to the International Institute of New England (IINE) in Lowell to support recent refugee and asylum seeking families from Afghanistan, Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela as they resettle in the area. Before the delivery day changed, Tom also delivered frozen meals to the Robinson Middle School in Lowell so that food insecure students could have prepared meals to bring home to eat over the weekend. 

Born in Peru and raised near Troy NY, Tom moved to Hudson 45 years ago and worked in various aspects of the computer industry. He retired in 2016 and got married in the midst of the COVID epidemic in 2020. He serves as an Elder at the Presbyterian Church in Sudbury.

When asked why he chose to spend time volunteering for Open Table, Tom quoted an acquaintance who said upon retirement, “I’ve done well, now I want to do good.” Tom is certainly “doing good”, bringing food and groceries to those at the furthest reaches of Open Table’s service area, making a difference in the lives of some of the most vulnerable populations.