TIMOTHY WICKHAM-CROWLEY

1951 - 2021

WICKHAM-CROWLEY Timothy Patrick Wickham-Crowley Professor November 12, 1951-October 29, 2021 Timothy Wickham-Crowley passed away at home on October 29, 2021 after 16 months of coping with metastatic kidney cancer. He was 69. Tim was a simple and generous soul at heart, sweet natured and alive to the wonders of this world and its people on so many levels. He reveled in cooking the many cuisines he and his wife Kelley discovered over the years and treasured the many students and friends from across the country and the world who came into his life and enriched it so. He loved language and all its potential in puns, poetry and wordplay, and often stopped in mid-walk to gesture widely at a landscape and say, "Look at that-isn't it beautiful?" His appreciation for and joy in the world around him never left. Despite many travels over forty years of marriage, he regretted at the last that he could not see more of this world, and that Covid had isolated him and Kelley from friends and family so cruelly during that time. Born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, in what still is a very diverse blue collar town, Tim grew up surrounded by immigrant families and kept in touch with schoolmates even from grade school. Many of them met for brunch a couple of times a year pre-Covid, and on Zoom after that, expanding his reunions with old friends. He was the Thomas Jefferson High School graduating class of 1969's salutatorian, but stood out among his peers from the moment he transferred from Saint Mary's Catholic school to his neighborhood public grammar school, Abraham Lincoln School 14, in the sixth grade. His grammar school friends remember him as being extraordinarily poised, confident, and smart, polite and kind, and very inquisitive about everyone and everything around him. Those characteristics marked him throughout his life. He earned a scholarship to Princeton due to his early promise as a scholar and student, but with his enduring humor, used to puncture the "preppiness" of many classmates by yelling across the quad to other working class friends, "hey Joe, I prepped at PS 105, where'd you prep?" He earned a bachelor's degree at Princeton (1973) and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Cornell (1982). At Cornell for graduate school, his choice of sociology led him to look at those who fought for recognition and justice, studying Latin American revolutions and development. His intense love of music led him to join the Catholic community's choir and a madrigals group founded by his then-future wife Kelley, one of the many things that led them to realize what they shared. Married in 1981, they lived their first two years together in Durham, England, where Tim followed Kelley while she completed a graduate archaeology degree, and then returned to Ithaca as Tim taught several one-year stints at Hamilton College and the University of Rochester before taking a tenure line post at Georgetown University. His career there lasted 34 years,1986-2020, during which he shared his erudition, tough critical stances and encouragement with students and colleagues in Sociology and in Latin American Studies. He was Associate Professor of Sociology and chaired that department from 2011 to 2016. From 2002 to 2007 he served as the M.A. Program Director for Latin American Studies. He also served as Program Chair of the Latin American Studies Association's (LASA) 21st International Congress (1998). Later he served a three-year term on LASA's Executive Council, and was nominated to run for Vice-President (thereafter President) in 2012. His research interests included Latin American guerrilla movements and social revolutions, and development and underdevelopment in the Americas since 1500. He is the author of more than a dozen articles and chapters on guerrilla movements and revolution and two books, Exploring Revolution: Essays on Latin American Insurgency and Revolutionary Theory (M. E. Sharpe, 1991), and Guerrillas and Revolution in Latin America: A Comparative Study of Insurgents and Regimes since 1956 (Princeton University Press, 1992). The latter book was nominated both for the Bryce Wood Award (for best book) given by LASA and for the Distinguished Publication Award of the American Sociological Association. Tim was also beloved by his students and was an acclaimed teacher. In 1991, he was nominated by Georgetown students and selected to become an honorary faculty member of Alpha Sigma Nu, the National Jesuit Honor Society. He was twice nominated by School of Foreign Service seniors for teaching awards. In 2008 he received from the College of Arts and Sciences the Dean's Award for Excellence in Teaching. Over the years, Tim shared his esoteric pop culture references, love of movies, and immense knowledge of trivia. Early on, he learned to play golf and gamely joined a foursome of family members who were far more gifted at the sport than he, never letting it stop him from having fun. He took up cross-stitching for a while and finished several projects for family, including a southwest wedding vase piece for his 15th anniversary and a Merry Chrismoose pillow for his father. He regularly visited the zoo when time allowed, having an abiding love for all creatures. Even in his final illness, watching nature programs and animal shows warmed his heart, and both those and cooking shows, notably Somebody Feed Phil, let him travel a bit in his imagination. He continued to do crosswords and read widely throughout his life, loving comics and Conan the Barbarian, Mad Magazine, the Dresden Files magician detective series, historical mysteries, Ogden Nash, Garrison Keillor's collection Good Poems, Sherlock Holmes, P.G. Wodehouse, books of insults in assorted languages, weighty tomes on Cuba or Latin America and issues of current concern such as voting rights and racial justice, or just books of collected trivia on any topic imaginable. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings held particular meaning for him and Kelley, and he had begun rereading Harry Potter in his final weeks. Anyone knowing Tim knows how he loved to talk, how easily he engaged with new people. His jokes were legion, his silliness endearing, his laugh one of the signature sounds friends associated with his personality. Chuck Jones and his character Wile E. Coyote numbered among his heroes. We will miss Tim's laugh especially, but also his infectious humor, his grace, and above all his sweet gentleness. Services and Burial on Friday, November 5, at National Funeral Home and National Memorial Park, 7482 Lee Highway, Falls Church, VA 22042. Viewing 12:30 p.m., Celebration Service 1:30 p.m., Burial 3 p.m.. Donations may be given in Tim's honor to Doctors Without Borders, the National Park Foundation, the Himalayan Cataract Project, or the Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute.Services and Burial on Friday, November 5, at National Funeral Home and National Memorial Park, 7482 Lee Highway, Falls Church, VA 22042. Viewing 12:30 p.m., Celebration Service 1:30 p.m., Burial 3 p.m.. Donations may be given in Tim's honor to Doctors Without Borders, the National Park Foundation, the Himalayan Cataract Project, or the Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute.