|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Many Pleasanton Unified School District community members, both past and present, have been mourning the death of Foothill High School’s founding principal and longtime educator, Neil Sweeney, while also celebrating the legacy he left behind.
“He had a wonderful career, a great family, and countless friends,” Keith Sweet, a former Pleasanton educator who followed Sweeney to Foothill when the school first opened, told the Weekly. “I am a better person for having known him.”
Sweeney died Nov. 30. He was 99 years old.
Sweeney was born in 1926 and raised in San Francisco where he spent his adolescence attending school, working as a delivery driver and playing football, which became one of his biggest passions in life, according to his online obituary.
After high school, Sweeney received a football scholarship to Saint Mary’s College in Moraga but, upon turning 18, he enlisted in the Navy during World War II. After the war, he returned to graduate from St. Mary’s in 1950, where he met his wife, Beverly.
Sweeney always aspired to coach football and so he decided to get into teaching so that he could also coach, according to Donna Kamp McMillion, who interviewed Sweeney for her book, “Cruising Down Memory Lane: Stories of Pleasanton in the 1950s”.
McMillion said Sweeney at first was considering teaching in San Francisco, mainly because of the better pay at the time. However, Tom Hart, a college friend and fellow longtime Pleasanton educator, persuaded Sweeney to work in Pleasanton.
After an odd interview underneath a tractor with the district’s superintendent at the time, Sweeney got his first teaching job at Amador Valley High School. McMillion said the superintendent was in the process of repairing the tractor during the interview.
While Sweeney pursued his dream and coached Amador’s football team, McMillion said Sweeney quickly realized he was just as passionate about teaching and molding the minds of future generations as he was about coaching football.
Sweeney quickly rose through the ranks at Amador and eventually became principal before he helped start Foothill High School in the early 1970s.
“He will always be remembered as the first leader of the Falcons, helping establish Foothill High School in 1973 as the school’s first principal,” current Foothill principal Sebastian Bull said in a statement to the Weekly. “He was integral in the planning and design of the initial campus while he was working at Amador and then opened our school.”
Bull said he and the rest of the Foothill community were saddened to hear about Sweeney’s death, acknowledging all that the founding principal did for the school.
“I always appreciated the time he took to share with me his experiences at Foothill and how it all began,” Bull said. “As current principal, I am honored to follow in his footsteps and to continue honoring the Foothill traditions and foundation he laid as the first principal.”
Sweet, who was interviewed by Sweeney for a job at Amador in 1971, also spoke about Sweeney’s character as an administrator during those early years.
“He had a warm smile and a demeanor that made you feel he was a man of integrity, honesty and that he had a good sense of humor,” Sweet said. “I doubt that I have ever been as comfortable in an interview as that day with Neil.”
While he didn’t get the job at Amador — Sweeney instead found him a position at Harvest Park Middle School — Sweet did eventually follow Sweeney to Foothill once the high school opened.
“Neil called me and asked if I would consider helping him open up Foothill High and I jumped at the chance as he had great visions for what we could do there,” Sweet said. “He had great empathy for students and was heavily invested in providing a school environment that was safe and nurturing and one that provided many opportunities for student growth.”
After two years as principal, Sweeney moved into the district office serving in various administrator roles before retiring as deputy superintendent in 1986. Sweeney continued to live a full life organizing athletic conference championships, writing stories and contributing to various foundations, charities and organizations.
Cheree Hethershaw, whom Sweeney hired in 1971 at Amador right before he left for Foothill, told the Weekly that while she didn’t directly work with Sweeney as much, she recognized the great work he did for the district and when she heard the news of his death, it really hit her hard.
“It’s kind of like my heart just sank in my body,” Hethershaw said when she heard the news of his death. “He was just a genuine person.”
But even after his death, McMillion said Sweeney’s legacy lives on through the many students he had an impact on over the decades and through his own kids and grandchildren, many of whom are now educators themselves.
“He really helped this school district grow,” McMillion said. “He really was intense about doing the right thing and helping as much as possible … he was really determined to do well and mentor these kids.”
The family invites the community to a vigil for Sweeney set for Jan. 13 at 6 p.m. at Graham Hitch Mortuary and the mass of Christian burial on Jan. 14, 10 a.m., at St. Augustine’s Church in Pleasanton.
In lieu of flowers, the family is requesting donations to the Neil and Beverly Sweeney Family Endowed Scholarship at Saint Mary’s College, to continue his commitment to education for future Gaels at stmarys-ca.edu/SweeneyEndowment.
