Tom Bazow grew up with the wonderful smell of bread baking at his family’s Olean, New York, bakery.
Grandpa Bazow fell in love with the bakery owner’s daughter and the couple’s sons and daughters maintained the business for years with their children helping out during summers and school vacations.
The family sold Swatt’s Bakery, which is still in operation, and Bazow found his calling as a teacher. After studying at Tri-State University, he taught at Butler Elementary School for 27 1/2 years, along with working part time at Summit Coach.
Later, Bazow and buddy Pat O’Brian started the Excursion bus company in 2000.
Bazow retired from teaching in 2007 and the two friends sold the company in 2018.
Though now fully retired at age 64, baking is still part of Bazow’s DNA and baking and sharing bread is what Bazow has become known for (though he’ll sometimes mix it up with cookies and cinnamon rolls).
Depending on the occasion and the attendees, he’ll bake white, cinnamon, cinnamon raisin, Italian or brown bread.
And he loves sharing.
Home-baked bread is the perfect comfort food and gift, and Bazow uses it as a way to reconnect with neighbors, Westview Alliance Church friends and former employees. That was especially true coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic when everyone was looking to revitalize connections.
“I don’t know that anything I’ve done is extraordinary,” he said. “I just like visiting with people. That was probably ingrained from my parents because visiting is just something we did. This is just something I enjoy doing.”
A few years ago, neighbors in his Hacienda Village regularly gathered for soup and salad and invited him, asking he bring a relish selection or a vegetable tray. The first time he brought home-baked bread, one of the friends said, “Tom, you’ll never have to ask what you can bring, you can always bring bread!”
So he did, and during the pandemic, he’d bake bread as gifts, keeping him busy and providing them a lift.
“I’ve always been social,” he said. “I started doing it while I was working, but after retiring I kind of increased it more. During COVID, it was a good time for people to have bread and stuff. And then I get to visit.”
Once or twice a month, he delivers his gifts to about 30 families from Spencerville and Butler to Bryan and Defiance, Ohio, Woodburn to Huntington and 10 neighborhood families. The timing often depends on the urge to get out and visit.
“I think it just is the type of thing that it fills that sense of obligation for him,” O’Brian said of Bazow. “We all have that sense that we have to fill in or be where we can help out and make a difference, even if it’s the slightest difference. For Tom, it’s a serving thing and it’s selfless.”
Besides delivering bread, he looks out for all his neighbors, particularly the widows, helping out when he can with snow-blowing and other chores.
“He just enjoys running around doing good things for people,” neighbor Suzanne Hall said.
Bazow will bake three loaves at a time and a maximum of nine per day. Everyone wants the recipe, but he says it’s just from the “Betty Crocker Cookbook.” No, he doesn’t care to experiment, either.
“I know what it’s supposed to taste like when it’s finished,” he simply said.
Often, he’ll then just show up at a person’s front door with a loaf.
“It’s just what Tom does, and he’s very good at it,” said neighbor Cheri Burke, who loves Bazow’s brown bread. “He’s a pretty modest guy, but I know he has a lot of friends everywhere. He’s just a very generous person.”
He’s been known to make three dozen cinnamon rolls or a few dozen cookies at a time. Bazow even took the time to teach neighbor De Stoner’s three grandchildren how to bake. Of course, they ate all the “mistakes” and took most of it home to grandma.
“How many people would do that?” Stoner said. “How many times do you get a chance to have homemade bread? People don’t take the time to do that nowadays because it’s just too easy to buy some. That’s a real treat.”
