Tom Schulte spent decades climbing the ranks of the insurance industry before retiring to Ball Ground, Georgia — and rather than settle into a quiet retirement of golf and pickleball, he picked up woodworking tools and started building kitchen tables for strangers. Six years later, he has made 430 of them, all handed over for free to Habitat for Humanity families moving into new homes across the state.
Schulte's project, called Your Family's Table, grew out of his own volunteer work with Habitat for Humanity, which he has supported for eight years, according to CBS Atlanta. He helped build homes for families seeking homeownership, and at some point decided those families needed something else too: a table to gather around once the keys were finally in hand. He does not take a paycheck for any of it.
Before he founded the nonprofit, Schulte spent more than 40 years in executive leadership roles in employee benefits, including senior management positions at Aetna, CIGNA, and Dominium Benefits, and he served as interim CEO of the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Georgia and Alabama, according to background published by Your Family's Table. The idea for the tables themselves traces back to a family retail venture: Schulte's wife and daughter opened a store called Southern Oak Provisions in Ball Ground and asked him to build farm tables for the shop, a request that instead sent him toward building tables for low-income Habitat homeowners.
A Table, A Basket, And A Family Signature
Each table Schulte builds gets seating to go with it, and every one is signed on the underside with the words “Your Family's Table.” The nonprofit also sends families off with a basket meant for something specific: a place to put phones while everyone sits down to eat, so devices stay off the table and conversation stays face-to-face, the group says.
Schulte told the station a family table can help keep a household together, and he said he hopes each one becomes a long-term gathering place rather than just furniture. He volunteers one day a week building and delivering the pieces, and he and his wife use a custom trailer and their own truck to haul finished tables to Habitat homeowners across Georgia. As for what pushed him toward this particular second act, Schulte has said people can get bored after playing golf, tennis, or pickleball — he wanted something that felt like giving back to people in need.
Most Recipients Are Single Mothers Starting Over
The families receiving Schulte's tables have included single mothers with children, according to the CBS Atlanta report. That lines up with the demographics local Habitat affiliates describe: roughly 95% of Habitat for Humanity homeowners in the metro Atlanta region are women, frequently single mothers and first-generation homebuyers, per NW Metro Atlanta Habitat for Humanity, and those new homeowners often move in with little to no furniture of their own.
The same affiliate noted that Your Family's Table hit a milestone in August 2023, delivering its 200th handmade dining set — a dramatic jump from the project's original goal of supplying just 50 tables a year to Atlanta Habitat for Humanity. Schulte's operation has kept growing since: this past May, Your Family's Table served as an official organizational sponsor of Habitat for Humanity's 2026 Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter Work Project, which brought hundreds of volunteers together to build 24 homes in Atlanta's Sylvan Hills neighborhood, as Hoodline reported in its coverage of the Carter project.
Why A Table Matters More Than It Seems
Schulte's belief that a kitchen table helps hold a family together isn't just personal philosophy. Research compiled by The Family Dinner Project at Harvard University's Graduate School of Education shows that regular family mealtimes improve children's academic performance and mental health while lowering the risk of depression and substance abuse — even though only about 40% of U.S. families regularly eat dinner together. Schulte's small basket for phones speaks directly to that research, aiming to protect the undistracted time around the table that the Harvard-compiled findings suggest matters most.
His own volunteering also fits a broader national pattern among retirees. About 26.3% of U.S. adults aged 65 and older participated in formal volunteering in 2023, logging higher median annual volunteer hours than any other age group, according to data analyzed by America's Health Rankings. Research evaluated by the federal agency AmeriCorps and public health institutions further indicates that older adults who volunteer regularly experience reduced depression symptoms, lower rates of loneliness, and mortality rates up to 44% lower over five years compared to non-volunteers.
A Local Need That Isn't Going Away
Schulte's work also sits against a backdrop of persistent housing affordability pressure in Cherokee County. Just this month, officials in nearby Woodstock have been debating whether to annex and rezone the 130-unit Ansley Park mobile home community for traditional single-family subdivision development, a fight Hoodline detailed in its report on the Ansley Park rezoning debate. NW Metro Atlanta Habitat for Humanity, the affiliate serving Cherokee, Cobb, and Paulding counties, mobilized nearly 2,000 volunteers in 2024 and holds a Four-Star Charity Navigator rating for its work building homes and completing critical repairs across the region.
For Schulte, the math is simpler than any policy debate. Every table that leaves his shop in Ball Ground is another family with somewhere to sit down together — no bill, no strings, just his signature on the underside and a basket waiting for the phones.
