2025 Northville Township Volunteer of The Year - Tom Hughes

Tom Hughes, the Northville Township 2025 Volunteer of the Year, has made a career out of serving others.

Hughes is the Northville Township Deputy Fire Chief, a position he achieved in 2024, after first joining the Northville Township Fire Department in 2004 as a firefighter/paramedic.

Through the years, he was promoted. Hughes, a Township native, became a fire inspector in 2012 and then a fire marshal in 2017. During his tenure, he created the Department’s fire prevention division, introducing such innovative community risk reduction initiatives as the Kindergarten Fire and Life Safety Program and the Northville High School CPR education program. Since 2017, every kindergartner in Northville Public Schools learned fire prevention skills thanks to Hughes’ handiwork. He recently introduced a continuation of that program to educate fourth graders.

While off duty, Hughes continues to have a fire in his belly to assist others. He has volunteered with the Metro Detroit Fire Inspectors Society for the past 10 years and serves as a board member for the Oakland County Association of Arson and Fire Investigators for the last five. Also, he is president of the Northville Township Firefighters Charity Fund, which he founded in 2014. The 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization raises money throughout the year to better the lives of the local community and surrounding area, making them stronger. Hughes plans multiple fundraisers, including Muscular Dystrophy Association “Fill-the-Boot” drives; the annual Firefighter’s Ball and auction, where 750 guests “dine, drink, dance and donate”; and adopt-a-classroom celebrations, to name a few. Hughes has become a logistics and project management expert because of these activities.

In December 2024, the Charity Fund reached a monumental milestone. It officially donated more than $1 million since its inception. Some of the organizations it funded included the Northville Civic Concern, the Maybury State Park Trailhead playground, Unity Skatepark, Main Street League, Northville Youth Network, Northville High School’s student cardiac screening program and many more. Those that benefited fit the group’s principles: tradition, service, community.

Because he wasn’t busy enough, Hughes and the Charity Fund began the annual Tom Hughes Memorial Golf Classic in 2022 to honor his late father, a local business owner adored by everyone he met. It’s always a sell-out event at Northville Hills Golf Club and it raises more than $16,000 each year to fund the Tom Hughes Memorial Scholarship with the Northville Educational Foundation.

The achievement was a full-circle moment. Hughes, a Northville High School graduate, learned the value of giving back from his parents’ example. Now he and his wife, Maggie, continue the tradition with their children, Molly and Jackson, who are elementary students in Northville Schools.

Congratulations to Tom Hughes on being named the Northville Township 2025 Volunteer of the Year!