We love you back, Tom.
We love you back.
This is to and about Tom Golisano, who just gave more than a third of a billion dollars to some four score charities and non-profits stretching across a broad swath of central and western New York. The man who has been the region’s largest benefactor for a generation has decided at this season of his life to more than double all he has ever given and lay it on the table for the public good.
He said he had thought to include the more than $360 million in his will, but today is as good as tomorrow, and there’s no time like the present to do the right thing or a good thing.
And if he can read the will before he passes, I can write this while he is still here.
We love you back, Tom.
And “love” is the right word, because generosity like yours doesn’t come from the wallet, it comes from the heart, and gratitude like ours isn’t about dollars, it’s about lives – lives bettered and served by a man who cares about kids and kittens, veterans and veterinarians, and friends and neighbors he has never met.
The first thing Tom Golisano did for his neighbors was go to work. With a two-year diploma out of Alfred Tech and $3,000 in his pocket, he started a business that would provide family-supporting jobs for tens of thousands of employees and business-saving services for hundreds of thousands of customers. For every dollar he made for himself, he made a hundred or a thousand for the workers, businesses, suppliers and investors who lived in the orbit of his world.
Tom Golisano proved in every day of his working life that capitalism is the wellspring of prosperity for all, that hard work in an environment of freedom is the fuel of our economy and the material foundation for our lives.
That was his greatest contribution.
And then he started giving it away. Here a hundred thousand, there a million, then several millions and soon it was tens and hundreds and his name was on institutions of good across much of upstate New York. Not as a boast, but as an example, as a reminder that a person can make a difference.
And as a reminder that someone cares.
This imperfect, sometimes cantankerous old so and so gives a damn, about his neighbors, his state and his country. Abandoned dogs and sick kids, college students and those with special needs, the dreamers and the doers. God put it in Tom’s pocket, and Tom put it in their hands.
And that’s where the example comes in.
None of us are Tom Golisano, and none of us have his money. But each of us can have his heart and his commitment, and embrace the timeless ethic that where much is given much is required, that there is joy in paying it forward. If God has blessed us, then we in turn can be instruments in his hands to bless others. Our dollars will be smaller, but our love can be as large. We can do with what we have what Tom Golisano has done with what he has. The widow’s mite is as sacred as the billionaire’s millions.
Our responsibility isn’t to celebrate Tom Golisano, it is to emulate Tom Golisano – to follow his example.
And this gift of these hundreds of millions coming in a season of scarcity is literally saving some organizations endangered by recent cuts by the philanthropic community. The house was on fire, and Tom came with the hose.
And he wanted to do it before he died.
So I want to say this before he dies.
You have done well, sir, and you have done good. You have given fame to your family name, but more importantly, you have given it honor. You have made it the name of institutions of good, where the lives of children are saved, where the tears of veterans are dried, where the lives of the handicapped are blessed.
You have left the world better for your passage through it, in a way and to a degree unseen in this region since the era of George Eastman. And you have left an example of success – both to its acquisition and its disposition – that will inspire businessmen and businesswomen for generations to come.
And “Thank you” doesn’t seem to be quite enough.
So we’ll say what we feel.
We love you back, Tom.
We love you back.