Home > Grassroots > Faces > Tom Libby

Tom Libby

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Vice Chair
Oklahoma Chapter

You might say Tom Libby is a super-volunteer—and not just with the Sierra Club, for whom he has held more than two dozen volunteer leadership positions over the past decade.

"I volunteered to coach my eldest daughter’s basketball team when no one else stepped up," he recalls happily. "I checked out every library book they had on coaching youth basketball. Eventually I become a certified referee, and I'd officiate up to 10 youth recreation league games on weekends."

When his middle daughter became a Girl Scout, no one volunteered to lead the troop. So Libby did. "I was one of only two male Girl Scout leaders in central Oklahoma," he says. When his youngest daughter became a Girl Scout, he volunteered to lead her troop as well.

Meanwhile, he served for two years as president of "band boosters" at his daughters' high school, helping found a city-wide high school marching band contest. "I'll be heading up the contest again this fall," he smiles.

During the school year, Libby, an audio/video store manager, gives talks at schools about backpacking and the outdoors. Summers he conducts library workshops, teaching middle-school kids how to build model hot air balloons. His two younger daughters have traveled with him across Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas helping conduct junior balloonist workshops.

In 2003 Libby was honored by the American Hiking Society as its Oklahoma Volunteer of the Year for his work maintaining the state’s hiking trails. Two places he enjoys taking people are the Ozark Highlands, near the Arkansas border, and Robber’s Cave State Park, "where the notorious female outlaw Belle Star supposedly hid out."

Published: January 31, 2007