Volunteer Tim Gibson – Reducing Isolation with Letters and Love

Tim Gibson, who is 81 years old, is a longtime volunteer with God’s Love and a member of our Legacy Society. Tim has worked every shift during his more than 20-year tenure at God’s Love, with his most recent contribution connecting us – and our clients – to the organization Letters Against Isolation. Formed by two high school sisters during COVID, with the goal to send letters globally to isolated seniors, Letters Against Isolation are letters and cards written by volunteers from all over the country for us to deliver to our clients. Tim’s goal is to decrease the loneliness we know many of our clients feel. A good percentage of them are alone and housebound and sometimes the only person they see each week is one of our delivery drivers. We know that these letters make a difference in their lives.

“Letters Against Isolation is a natural fit with God’s Love,” Tim said. “Most God’s Love volunteers will never meet our clients, and the letters/cards writers will never meet the person reading something that came in their plastic bag. It is all just such a good thing.”

Tim is connecting our clients to the outside world, and he has always been about connection.

Growing up in the UK, Tim always liked geography in school. Eager to get to the places he saw so often on the map and to meet the people who lived there, Tim started his career in the airline business in operations. He decided to come to the US in 1970 for work. After a busy career in airline operations, Tim finished his years in the working world with a luxury travel company, seeking out the farthest corners of the planet for worldly adventures. By retirement, Tim had visited 157 countries with hundreds of people! He loves classical music and goes often to the New York Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera. He also works as an usher at BAM and lives in Brooklyn with his cat Oscar.

Tim says he was always a “volunteer-type.” After retirement, Tim began volunteering with New York Cares about 20 years ago. The organization connected him with a monthly kitchen volunteer shift, where he led a group of NY Cares volunteers as their team captain. Shortly after starting his monthly volunteer shifts, Tim decided to join God’s Love as a weekly volunteer and has been here ever since. Never one to slow down, Tim currently volunteers with God’s Love and Bloom Again Brooklyn, which repurposes flowers to nursing homes and their staff. His interests are as far-flung as his travels used to be – Tim used to record books, often scientific journals, for the blind.

In the four years he has been involved with LAI, Tim has written thousands of letters and revels in connecting LAI with other organizations, helping more letters get to more people. This year, Tim has connected us with over 5,000 letters. One of our clients called, almost in tears, and said he hadn’t received a letter in twenty years.

When asked why he volunteers with God’s Love and Letters of Isolation, Tim tells us, “I’m an old man with time on my hands! I look at the world and sometimes I see problems – most of the time I can’t do anything about them. But I do find things where I can make a difference. So I do something.”

When asked why he has joined the Legacy Society, Tim tells us, “To keep the good going, long after I’m gone.”

We are grateful to Tim for his many gifts of time and connection. It is because of people like him that we are able to continue our life-saving work of feeding our sick and vulnerable neighbors and to letting them know that they are not alone.

If you’d like to learn more about Letters Against Isolation, please visit lettersagainstisolation.com. To get involved with these cards for our clients, simply sign up with LAI and drop them off with Rich in the Volunteer Office!

To learn more about the Legacy Society, please visit glwd.org/legacy.