Throughout the next few weeks OLMC is publishing profiles of each of our Hall of Fame Inductees, we hope you enjoy these personal portraits of alumni, parishioners and Academy families and we especially hope to see you at the gala event, November 30, 2018. Tickets can be purchased at the Narthex Office after the 10AM Mass or in the Church and Academy offices during the week!
There are those parishioners who arrive at OLMC from far off places, where the community is lucky enough to find them and then there are OLMC’s hometown heroes…
Tom Izzard describes himself as a lifelong parishioner. “I was raised in the house I live in today,” Tom says. “I was baptized in OLMC and I suppose ‘lifelong parishioner’ sounds better than ‘parishioner for sixty years’—people will think I’m way older than I am!” he likes to joke. Tom’s father, William, who grew up on the outskirts of Toronto, moved from Manhattan to Tenafly shortly after the George Washington Bridge linked New York and Bergen County. Tom graduated from Our Lady of Mount Carmel School, as it was then called in 1969. Fordham Prep came next, followed by Fordham College and Fordham Law. 
His aunt, a Sister of St. Joseph, was celebrating her jubilee in 1986. When he attended the ceremony he noticed, “There weren’t too many people to talk to there that hadn’t already made previous vows, so I started talking to a young woman named Barbara.” A year later they were married. Barbara is currently on staff at the Academy!
It was the example of his mother, Dorothy, that got Tom so involved in parish life. “My mom served the parish for twenty years from 1960 to 1980, mostly in fundraising and on the Parish Council. When I was a teenager it was easier to serve as an usher than have to sit with my family at 10:00 Mass,” he says of his first time serving the parish. His love of public speaking saw him move to the sanctuary as a lector and Eucharistic Minister.
Professionally, Tom is a partner in the law firm of Fierro, Fierro and Izzard, PC located in Fort Lee, New Jersey. It wasn’t long after Tom’s admission to the bar that his parish needed his service. He has served as the parish’s attorney and finance council member for over thirty years.
Tom and Barbara’s daughter, Annie, came along in 1995 and graduated from the Academy in 2009 following her father’s footsteps. She’s currently studying to be a nurse. Serving runs in the family. It was Annie’s rambunctious energy that led Tom to help coach our championship Track program. “The year was 2000,” Tom begins. “I had a young daughter who loved to run. I couldn’t keep up with her so we signed her up for the OLMC Track Team. Coach Ron Miller and (fellow 2018 Hall of Fame inductee) Coach Bill Angresano asked me to help. I thought I was just going to tell the kids to stop picking the dandelions, but I ended up getting in shape and a decade later, years after Annie graduated, I’m still there.”
Tom was made a parish trustee after Ed Reilly’s passing in October 2014. “OLMC has always been an extended family to me – it’s given me my sense of community. The friends we’ve met all those years ago are still our friends,” he says. “If you want a better parish, you have to work to make it better,” his mom used to say. How true that is. Our Lady of Mount Carmel is better having been served by our hometown hero, Tom Izzard.
The Lumen Christi Award will be presented to Mr. Thomas Izzard. The Lumen Christi Award, Latin for “the light of Christ,” is given to those individuals and couples who not only serve the community of Our Lady of Mount Carmel by shining a light into their world, but share that light in a variety of ways by worshiping and praying with us as members of our church.