{"id":704,"date":"2020-09-16T10:33:44","date_gmt":"2020-09-16T14:33:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.montgomerymag.com\/?p=704"},"modified":"2020-09-16T11:24:11","modified_gmt":"2020-09-16T15:24:11","slug":"tom-hill-serving-the-public","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.montgomerymag.com\/tom-hill-serving-the-public\/","title":{"rendered":"After a Career in Public Service, Tom Hill is Still Serving the Public"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Volunteer
Photo by David Stuck<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For more than four decades, Tom Hill woke up at 5 a.m. and commuted into D.C. to his job in the federal government. Now retired, the 71-year-old from Gaithersburg still hits the road every single day of the week, donating his time, talents and good heart as a volunteer.<\/p>\n

Hill serves as a driver, a dispatcher and, recently, a board member for Meals on Wheels. \u201cIt\u2019s very rewarding to visit my clients and take them a hot and cold meal,\u201d says Hill. He enjoys spending time talking to them and has been known to go the extra mile, purchasing food with his own money or even clearing the weeds outside somebody\u2019s home if a client needs the help.<\/p>\n

Hill also spends part of every day at the St. Martin of Tours Food Pantry<\/a>. \u201cWhen the pandemic hit, the food pantry went from around 170 clients every Monday to 270
\nclients,\u201d Hill says. So he stepped up to become coordinator for the Monday
\ndistribution, working from 5 a.m. to 1 p.m. Then he\u2019s at the food pantry Tuesday through Sunday to receive donations from local businesses, churches and other individuals.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe continue to serve the needs of the greater Gaithersburg community. We were able to meet the increased demand by reaching out to new companies for support,\u201d says Hill.<\/p>\n

Hill is no stranger to working for the good of the community. Even while he worked for the federal government, Hill donated his evenings and weekends to serve on various councils and boards at St. Martin of Tours Church, St. Elizabeth\u2019s Church and several local chapters of the Jaycees, among other organizations.<\/p>\n

When his three children were young, Hill also served as PTA president at two different elementary schools, as the PTA coordinator for the Quince Orchard cluster and as the capital improvement chairman for the Montgomery County Council of PTAs. As meetings often took place during the school day, he\u2019d take leave from work in order to fulfill his duties.<\/p>\n

\u201cI volunteered for the schools and the civic and church groups because of my sense of civic pride and the need to give back to others for what I had,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\n

Read More: Hal Horenberg of Home At Last Sanctuary has one goal: No animal left behind<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Hill\u2019s entire professional career revolved around public service. After working for the FBI from 1974 to 1978 and the National Center for Education Statistics from 1978 to 1983, he spent 35 years at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), first as a senior public affairs specialist and then chief of staff for ATF\u2019s science and technology division. He retired in 2018.<\/p>\n

\u201cTom was always one step ahead. His innovative ideas to make processes better were matched only by his enthusiasm in producing results,\u201d says Karen Leftridge, who worked closely with Hill in the Office of Congressional and Public Affairs. \u201cBut what most impressed me about Tom was that he never compromised his integrity, and he never failed to credit others. No one remained invisible under his watch. He cared.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hill explains that he spent his entire career in government because he believed he could make a difference. \u201cI was a civil servant helping in my own way to protect America and practice justice for all,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Not that there weren\u2019t challenges along the way. Over 43 years, Hill served under many presidents\u2014and didn\u2019t always agree with their policies\u2014but \u201cservice to my country was always my guiding light,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Despite his busy volunteering schedule, Hill finds time to walk 20,000 steps a day through his Quince Orchard neighborhood, where he\u2019s lived for 33 years with his wife, Lynn. As he walks, Hill picks up the trash, removing water bottles, beer cans, tissues and paper thrown into the streets.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen people see me, they thank me for picking up the neighborhood, so I must be a good neighbor,\u201d he chuckles in a self-deprecating way. \u201cWell, I am from Pennsylvania like Mister Rogers.\u201d<\/p>\n

A version of this story appears in the\u00a0August-September 2020 issue<\/a>\u00a0of Montgomery Magazine.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 71-year-old retiree from Gaithersburg manages a busy volunteering schedule that includes Meals on Wheels deliveries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":705,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[94,13,61],"tags":[101,100],"yoast_head":"\nAt 71, Tom Hill Continues Serving the Public - Montgomery Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"After a career in public service, retiree Tom Hill of Gaithersburg is still serving the public every day of the week.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.montgomerymag.com\/tom-hill-serving-the-public\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"At 71, Tom Hill Continues Serving the Public - 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