Our Friend, Jim

By now most of you have met Dr. Jim Sweeney, a retired educational leader living in North Raleigh currently working as TLA Consultant for Planning & Development. Jim's role with TLA is, by his own description, a "jobette," a way to stay engaged in one's passion while remaining free, say, to spend the summer at your Sierra Nevada mountain cabin. So in this Friday's blog, allow me pull a few thoughts together, the sum of which I hope will inspire you to be like our friend, Jim, when you grow up.

If you missed last week's blog, it is because I did not write one. This was so, in part, because my wife, Deborah, and I were spending two of our eleven-day California vacation with Jim and his wife, Jan. Having retired from Sacremento City Schools as a superintendent and then later as a superintendent coach for the Stupski Foundation for Education, Jim moved to North Raleigh only a couple of years ago, once again demonstrating the talent magnet that is our little corner of the world.

By the way, Jim had enjoyed an earlier career as a professor at Valdosta State and Iowa State Universities, this on the heels of being a successful public school teacher, coach, and principal. What Jim is able to share with our clients is way beyond useful. I will save for another occasion exactly how he is helping TLA.

Several years prior to moving east, Jim and Jan bought a place in Graeagle, California, a beautiful high Sierra town about an hour northwest of Reno, Nevada. Although Jim is a septuagenarian, we "young folk" struggled to keep up with him on our daily hikes in this nearly mile-high land. At night, we ate and drank like kings and queens and slept like babies. Clearly, Jim and Jan share a philosophy that friendship, the beauty and bounty of nature, good food and wine, and spirited conversation matter and matter a lot.

As Jim and I typically hiked ahead of "the girls" each day, we had an opportunity to talk about books we were reading, people with whom we have worked, and the general state of education, leadership, and the world. For a man who has undoubtedly experienced his share of potholes and pitfalls, Jim has an amazingly sanguine view of the future. Whatever disappointments or regrets he may have, I never learned of them. With Jan, Jim seems determined to live life eyes straight ahead, as if everyday could be the last and so, a day to be celebrated, drank to the last drop.

So when I say that Jim is our friend, I mean that I am better for knowing him, more blessed because of his experience liberally shared with me and all those with whom he has worked at TLA. He is our friend because he is someone who patiently asks the right questions, listens deeply to your responses, and leaves you feeling as if what you said was the most important thing he heard all day. Jim is our teacher. In every way that have known Jim Sweeney, he has demonstrated, in this student's mind at least, the embodiment of a transformational leader. When I grow up, I want to be like just like Jim.