Cherry Hill Tomato Run



Counting Cards
Brad and Randy with a 2017 Beauty


In 1982 after recently moving to Atlanta, Georgia from Charlotte, NC, I found myself divorced and looking for a job. I ended up in the financial services business as a salesman calling on closely held business owners. This was cold call sales and I learned a whole new connotation of the word prospecting, which previously engendered images of adventure and romance. Friday afternoon boiler room dialing for dollars brought frightful adventure but no romance.

Two of the veteran men in the insurance company, which I found a job with, learned in short order that I was looking for a place to live. Just by happenstance Randy and Ed were newly minted divorcees as well. I would fit nicely into the third bedroom of the home they were buying in Marietta. If you were living in Atlanta in the early 1980’s and were single, you most likely were familiar with the bar/club scene thriving at the time. I will stop just short of calling it Sodom and Gomorrah. Of course, our place on Rhodes drive was nothing of the sorts.

In 1983 we moved our separate ways as I left the financial services business. Although I stayed in touch with Ed, I did not have any meaningful contact with Randy for another quarter century. What I remember most about Randy in those years in the financial services industry was that he had a knack for numbers. His real value to our employer was designing Defined Benefit Pension Plans in the private corporation so that the small business owner could get the largest amount of money in the most tax advantaged way out of his business. Large amounts of life insurance could be sold in these plans with pretax dollars.

Outside of the business, Randy put his talents to work playing cards. I was always aware that he was a world class bridge player and a sought-after partner in local tournaments. He once told me that there was a Casino in Nevada where not only was he banned at the black jack tables he was uninvited to the building! Back in our neighborhood was a local watering hole called “The Foxes Den” the three of us used to frequent and on backgammon nights he was known to hustle his meal and adult beverages.

In the fall of 2010, I was a pilgrim on a North Georgia Walk to Emmaus. Mine was a profound spiritual experience on that weekend. A part of the experience was seeing Randy Pettit for the first time in over a quarter century. Not only has our involvement in the Emmaus movement rekindled our friendship, the third roommate, Ed, is now part of the fellowship having been a Walk Pilgrim in the fall of 2017. The three roommates had our first reunion in twenty years in January of 2017.


Randy, Brad, and Ed in 2017

Since reconnecting, I have learned that Randy has developed a strong faith and a servant’s heart. There are some women in more than one church who refer to him as the “Tomato Man”. About twenty years ago, Randy was on his yearly trip back home to New Jersey when he discovered amidst the urban sprawl of Philadelphia an oasis in the metropolitan desert. In less than a twenty-minute PATCO train ride from Philadelphia and minutes from Cherry Hill, NJ he found the family farm of a man named Tom Jarvis. The farm starts in the backyard of the Jarvis home and from it come some of the plumpest juiciest home-grown tomatoes in God’s creation.

On that initial trip back to Marietta, Georgia he could only get less than a hundred pounds into his late model sedan. He gave those tomatoes away to neighbors and friends from his Church. The demand grew so that Randy bought a much larger pickup truck. Now this annual “Tomato Run” has become a major fundraiser for Missions at East Cobb United Methodist Church as Randy brings back over 1,000 pounds of tomatoes! In August of 2017 I was blessed to receive and enjoy a few of these wonders of creation.

At 75 years young, Randy believes 2018 is most likely his last “Tomato Run.” This writer, who volunteered to copilot this year’s sojourn out east, can attest it is a grueling trip especially when you compact it into four days. There is a critical element to his turnaround calculations because timing is crucial in tomato ripening from picking and transporting to distributing. He also includes in his itinerary visits with family in the Philadelphia area and with old high school friends over in Ocean City.

One thing I know about my friend, who has always been a specialist in Defined Benefit Pension Plans, through his strong Christian faith he has become an expert in divine benefit service to others!
Amen Brother Randy!


You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. This is my command: Love each other.

John 15:14-17 (NIV)

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