Do-gooder gets joy from sending kids on shopping spree

Tom Gubitosi became a philanthropist by chance more than a decade ago when he stepped up to keep Nassau County jail's long-running Christmas bail for nonviolent offenders program going - after reading a 1997 Newsday story that the tradition was in trouble.

But when his mother, Marie, died after an 11-year fight with ovarian cancer one day before Thanksgiving in 2000, Gubitosi pushed chance aside.

He stepped forward, again, this time to become a philanthropist by design.

Within days of his mom's death, Gubitosi was on the telephone to the Education and Assistance Corp. of Hempstead.

"We had helped him with screening for the Nassau County jail program," said Lance Elder, the corporation's executive director.

This time, however, Gubitosi wanted something different.

"Tom asked if we had 100 children that he could give $100 each to for a Christmas shopping spree at a toy store," Elder said.

And thus a new tradition was born. But not at a toy store.

After consulting with Elder, Gubitosi agreed to fund a shopping spree at a Target, so that the children - who are picked by the corporation and who range from preschoolers to high school students - could buy anything from toys to music players to jeans.

For 11 years - beginning the month after Gubitosi and his family gathered around his mother's hospital deathbed - Gubitosi has gifted thousands of local children with $100 each for Christmas presents.

He started with 100, but as time passed, Gubitosi's generosity grew. Last week - thanks to his gift of more than $20,000 - more than 200 children were invited to a shopping spree at a Walmart in East Meadow.

"He is an angel," Elder said. "An absolute angel."

Gubitosi doesn't see it that way, however. "I am a selfish philanthropist," the former stockbroker, who is now semiretired, said during an interview at his Farmingdale home last week.

He started giving to the children, he explained, as a way of working through his own grief.

"I loved to surprise my mother," he said. "She took care of everyone but spent nothing on herself."

In 2000, Gubitosi had hidden away Christmas presents for his mother, "ones that were sure to make her eyes light up," he remembered.

But he never got to give them to her. So, Gubitosi decided, he would give to children, through a foundation he established in memory of his mother, instead.

"I wanted to see the joy in their eyes, the joy I missed seeing in my mother's," he said. "I did it in her memory because I knew it was something that would make her proud."

Those feelings have not diminished over the years. The children - some of whom have received Gubitosi's generosity several times over the years - swarm over him.

"I met a teenager last year who told me she has been coming every Christmas since she was 5," Gubitosi said.

"She thanked me but I felt that I should be thanking her," he said. "These children, who have had it tougher than a lot of adults, have a grace about them. A lot of them don't even buy presents for themselves. They're buying for their siblings or their parents."

Last week, two teenagers filled their shopping carts with food to feed their family - which is homeless and living in a motel.

"I asked them why they didn't want toys or something else, and they told me," Gubitosi said. "It broke my heart."

Gubitosi's generosity helps more than needy children and their families, however. It also helps the volunteers who, year after year, show up to help the children shop.

"We've got a lot of volunteers who end up mentoring children," Gubitosi said.

Elder said that some of the teenage volunteers have also gone on to sponsor their own pajama, coat and other charity drives. "Tom's philanthropy has seeded philanthropy in new generation of others," he said.

Gubitosi - who reads and keeps every single thank you card from the children - said he plans to continue the tradition for as long as he can.

"It started in sorrow," he said. "It's ended up gifting me with joy."