My Story - Tom Weiner

Tom grew up in Elmont, Long Island until the 6th grade and then moved to Teaneck, N.J. where he lived until he began attending Trinity College in Hartford in the fall of 1967. After graduating college in june, 1971 he faced the draft. After not passing the physical/mental examination (he tells the story in Called to Serve), he then was able to pursue a travel study grant – the Watson Fellowship – that enabled him to study alternative education in England, the continent and Israel from Sept. of 1971 to June of 1972. Upon his return he started law school at NYU, but soon left the city to commence his life in Northampton, MA where he has lived ever since.

Tom is married to Susan Dudek, has four children ranging in age from 32-52 and four grandchildren, 6-16. He taught and mentored student teachers at the Smith College Campus School in Northampton, MA, a laboratory and teacher training elementary school, for 40 years. For the last 33 he was a 6th grade teacher. In addition, he has taught high school to inner city Upward Bound students at the University of Connecticut for 19 summers ending in '95 and summer school in Northampton for 15 years.  

Tom is a social justice activist who addresses issues of fairness and access in his work and in his community. In the past he has held positions ranging from co-chair of the Civil Rights Committee of the Northampton Public Schools to membership on the Journey Towards Wholeness committee seeking greater racial and socio-economic diversity in the local Unitarian Society and the zoning revisions committee as the outreach representative.  More recently he has been a member of a men’s cross-race dialogue group and the Bridge4Unity, both intended to promote racial justice and healing. His major endeavor of the past 2 years in this realm has been being one of the co-founders of the Northampton Reparations Committee whose efforts included a petition seeking reparative justice for the city signed by over 1000 people and the unanimous passage of a Reparations Resolution that has set up a Reparations Commission to study past and current harms to Black citizens and to recommend measures that will redress these harms as well as to prevent them from continuing.

Since his retirement he has written two more books as indicated in the BOOKS section of this website and has a fourth due out in 2024. In addition he has been co-facilitating workshops entitled, “Developing Healthy Boys” for pre-school teachers, administrators and parents as part of the Merge For Equality organization (www.mergeforequality.org). He continues to get much satisfaction from playing the piano, riding his bike, being in his men’s group, now in its 45th year, and spending time with his family…