Tim Journey

Tim Journey—enthusiastic punster, witty raconteur, global citizen, and lead inventor of the broadly impactful Tara handpump for UNICEF—died, at age 82, at his home in Midlothian, Virginia, on December 27, 2025. Born William Kenneth Journey, on August 2, 1943, Tim grew up in Greenwood, Mississippi. (Although his parents attempted to nickname him Ken, his toddler sister's mispronunciation, "Tim," proved an enduring approximation.) During childhood and throughout his adolescence, Tim learned the physics of water well drilling, the family trade. Tim's early experiences in well drilling led to his lifelong interest in developing natural resources to benefit low-income rural communities, such as those in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where he invented, along with UNICEF colleagues Ken Gibbs and Erich Baumann, a low-lift direct-action handpump called the Tara pump. (Tara means "star" in both Bengali and Hindi.) Due to the simplicity of the pump's design, two women could complete the maintenance requirements in thirty minutes, which meant that communities could have access to safe drinking water all day, every day. A child could operate the Tara. And because of the pump's affordability, millions of families throughout Bangladesh could purchase the Tara for their own use. Between 2005-2007 alone, according to one estimate, Bangladesh's private sector utilized close to four million Tara pumps.

Tim earned his B.S. in biology, with a minor in German, from Millsaps College, in 1966. He spent his junior year in Berlin, studying at the Goethe Institute and renting (for cheap!) a drafty apartment whose bedroom had a large chunk of its roof and ceiling missing, having never been completely restored after World War II. After graduating, Tim joined the Peace Corps (sporting an ample bohemian mustache) and lived for two years in Guatemala, where he helped farmers and small villages manage rural water supplies. Due to a housing shortage, he once rented a room for an extended stay in a village brothel. The advantage of such an accommodation: easy access to beer. The disadvantage: a boisterous nocturnal ambience. During his volunteer service in Guatemala, Tim picked up a passel of parasitic Oestridae after a bot fly transferred its eggs to his skin, which hatched into flesh-burrowing larvae that took up temporary residence in his shoulder. Years later, as a joke on his bride during their honeymoon, Tim passed off his concave bot fly scar as a bullet hole.

In 1973, Tim met Cynthia Hanes on a blind date arranged by their mutual friend in Jackson, Mississippi, just before Tim was scheduled to move to Bangladesh for his job as a program officer for UNICEF. (Cindy had once told her parents that she hoped to marry "a square with rounded edges.") Six weeks after their first date, the couple married, honeymooned in New York and London, and moved to Dhaka. Subsequently, Tim and Cindy moved to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Peine, Germany; Ottawa, Canada; Alexandria, Virginia; Fairfax, Virginia; back to Dhaka, Bangladesh; New Delhi, India; back to Fairfax, Virginia; and, finally, Midlothian, Virginia. They raised their two girls in Dhaka, New Delhi, and Fairfax.

A committed public radio listener and informed citizen of the world, Tim declined to count sheep as he lay his head on his pillow. Instead, he slept to the edifying tidings of NPR, his earbuds snugly affixed so he wouldn't miss out on a single news story. Once, in the middle of an August night, in 1997, Tim tapped Cindy awake to report: "Princess Diana died."

Tim disliked: waiting; cliches; euphemisms; platitudes; malapropisms; redundancies; malls; crowds; magnolias (stinky blossoms); authoritarianism; kale (textural deficiency); snow ("odious substance"); corruption; and grudges.

Tim loved: the PBS News Hour; puns; quips; witticisms; animals (especially cats); etymology; science; sly understatement; history; solving problems; doggerel; woodworking; Monty Python; Groucho Marx; the Washington Commanders; biographies; NPR; foreign languages (he was fluent in German and Spanish); cooking (specialty: shrimp gumbo); playing bridge with old friends; a crisp pilsner; gardening (his planting: tasteful; his pruning: radical!); dogwood trees; National Geographic; the long-delayed punchline; his wife of fifty-three years, Cindy (an elementary-school teacher trained in the Montessori method); and their two daughters, Anna (a poet) and Rebecca (an anthropologist).

Unsentimental and stoic, practical and quick-witted, Tim identified as an agnostic and eschewed a funeral. He didn't fear death. "It's like switching off the lights," he said. When asked where he'd like his remains scattered after cremation, he replied: "I don't care what you do with my residual solids." In the spirit of Tim's creative mind, wide-ranging intelligence, ready humor, rangy curiosity, and genuine concern for the inhabitants of our world—especially vulnerable populations—his family celebrates Tim's incomparable presence and unique character. When family and friends remember Tim's problem-solving, humane sensibility, they might recall the reason that he and his colleagues named the Tara pump after the Bengali and Hindi word for star. Rhetorical fluffery wasn't Tim's style. He didn't care for metaphysical flourish. Instead, he and his collaborators chose a word that would avoid sectarian associations among Hindu and Muslim communities in Bangladesh. They reached for a name that would reconcile and beckon, illuminate access to clean water. "Who could argue," Tim said, "with a star?"