Within any small group such as DR-26 some personalities always stand out, and Tim Sweeney was one of our standouts: with a year of law school and a degree from USC’s business school, Tim was a year or two older than most, with a sophistication and training in business that put him strides ahead of the rest of us in the technical business skills needed by the co-ops the guys worked in.  Those business skills brought him occasional special assignments in the Capital, and toward the end of his service he was asked to return to Ponce to provide technical training to the next batch of trainees.  But Tim’s technical proficiency was just part of what made him a standout:  he seemed to know just about everybody in Bani, from the provincial Gobernadora, to the local USAID “técnico,” to the padres and nuns of the town’s Catholic Church. And both in training and in-country, Tim was the guy with the ever-ready quip, the tongue-in-cheek wit, the wry smile as he told a joke, an easy-going personality that made him a friend to all.

When his two years of Peace Corps service ended, Tim was  tempted by a couple of job offers in international development, but, like many of us, decided he should get back to “the real world.” And so, despite misgivings about leaving the world of international development, he returned to Los Angeles. From the 1970s to the 1990s, Tim made his life in the corporate world in the LA metro area. Then in the late 1990s, finding himself between jobs, and perhaps a little burnt-out by the corporate world, he was offered a job with the Red Cross in Central America. He spent the next seven years in Guatemala, where he seemed to find a fulfillment in international aid work, as well as a camaraderie with dozens of new friends, such as he had not had since his Peace Corps days.  In late 2006, after more than a year of declining health, he returned to California, where he was eventually diagnosed with the multiple myeloma and amyloidosis that took his life.  Although Tim had a number of girlfriends before, during, and after Peace Corps, he never married; he is survived by his four siblings and their families.