Jim & Tabitha Furyk Foundation celebrates 12 years of giving with annual 'Hope for the Holidays' community event

For most kids, Sunday evening is a rather ominous time. The sleeping in, relaxing and weekend adventures that largely define those Saturday and Sunday stretches take their rightful places in the memory bank.

Countless other kids, though, would give most anything to avoid those two days of downtime. To them, it’s a source of fear or – at best – uncertainty. Either way, it can easily turn minutes into hours. And, it all revolves around one thing: food. Specifically, a lack of food.

With well over 20 million children at risk of hunger in the United States, many students qualify for the federal Free and Reduced-Price Meal Program at school. As such, many of those children grow anxious with each approaching weekend, as the only assured meals are those provided Monday through Friday at school.

For the 12th consecutive year, the Jim & Tabitha Furyk Foundation held its annual “Hope for the Holidays” community event to help provide relief to food-insecure kids and their families in Northeast Florida.

On Thursday, hundreds of volunteers congregated in a TPC Sawgrass parking field, under a massive tent to offload, stack, arrange and, ultimately, bag nearly 70,000 pieces of food. Hundreds of Jacksonville-area students, athletes, families and businesses joined the efforts to fill a record 6,000 bags with a record 11 different food items.

Included items in 2023 ranged from “sturdy” items like ham, stuffing and mashed potatoes to corn, green beans, rice and even bags of oats for making oatmeal.

Once the bags were filled, each was loaded onto trucks for distribution. The group effort results in delivery of the bags to upwards of 40 Blessings in a Backpack schools and 11 other outlets spanning Duval, St. Johns and Clay counties.

“Our first year, we filled 250 bags,” said Tabitha Furyk. “Now, for our 12th consecutive year of doing this, we’re assembling 6,000 bags of food, all of which gets distributed throughout the city.”

Among those who receive the bags are Title 1 schools, food banks and other charitable organizations.

“These kids we’re feeding from Title 1 schools on free and reduced breakfast and lunch generally don’t know where their next meal is coming from,” Tabitha said. “They might not have parents at home. They might even be homeless. The need is continuing to grow and this is something we wanted to help this community with.”

In addition to the Jim & Tabitha Furyk Foundation’s efforts to alleviate some of the hunger woes that plague society is a strategy to increase awareness by involving the community.

“We wanted to pack the meals and get them to those in need, but Tabitha had the idea to involve the community,” said Jim Furyk. “There are quite a few people here in the Jacksonville area that are food deprived. They simply don’t know where that next meal is coming from. I think recognition of the issue here in the community and learning how to give back is a big part of what it’s all about.”

“We want to bring the community out to have a hands-on opportunity to give back to those in need,” Tabitha said. “It all started out with our kids when they were little. We didn’t want to just hand them $5 to take to school for their donation. Instead, we really wanted them to feel that true holiday spirit. By coming out and packing bags, they knew they were doing it for another child and their family.”

From Day 1, giving back has been at the heart of the PGA TOUR and remains as its biggest priority today. Following the lead of many other TOUR players who formed foundations of their own in their own cities, the Jim & Tabitha Furyk Foundation was formed in North Florida in 2010.

“Jim has been playing professionally for more than 30 years now, so we’ve really grown with the TOUR and grown with the giving,” Tabitha said. “It’s a lot like a family. We would go week in and week out, giving back to different communities, which was fantastic. So, to have been able to come back here to North Florida and utilize this community for our own foundation was wonderful.”

With what the Furyks take as a great indicator of how strongly North Florida supports “Hope for the Holidays,” they had more than a dozen companies in the two days leading up to the event bring employees out to help stock the shelves and get everything ready.

“What’s really special for us is the support we’ve received from the community,” said Jim. “We have folks out here in forklifts, lifting pallets of food onto trucks to be delivered. We have people cutting up boxes, putting out food and bagging it into thousands of bags. As a team, we were able to make this happen. We’re really thankful for the friends and community who have helped us out and share in the vision we have. It’s amazing the number of folks who realize the issues we have and want to come out and help.”

“The most heart-warming thing for us is when these bags get delivered and you see the look on these kids faces,” Tabitha said. “They know there are no toys and that it’s food they’re getting to take home to their families. They are literally tears of joy that they get to have these bags. It’s just crazy that food impacts a little one that much.”