Who Was Kay Sweeney?

Nelu Senanayakes de Silva '75 and Catherine Sweeney

Interviewees described Sweeney as intelligent, insightful, kind, friendly, generous, and self-effacing. She often donated to charitable causes anonymously. She preferred action to discussion, and accounts of good works shed some light on her personality.

The Sweeney scholars, who visited her Florida home during holidays, attest to all the above qualities. They were in awe of her wealth (“she was the humblest millionaire”) but even more so of her ability to interact with them as young women far from home — preparing meals, taking them Christmas shopping, and introducing them to the custom of filling Christmas stockings with unexpected treats. Sweeney was exceedingly modest, often describing herself as “just a lady gardener.”

Catherine Hauberg was raised in Rock Island, Ill., and stud- ied botany at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and graduate-level zoology at the University of Arizona. She was heiress to the Weyerhaeuser lumber fortune (the company was co-founded by her maternal grandfather Frederick Denkman with his brother-in-law Frederick Weyerhaeuser) and was reportedly one of the wealthiest women in the U.S. when she became a Wilson trustee in 1967. Her father had instilled a sense of curiosity and her mother an obligation to help others. She was the mother of five and a widow at the young age of 53.

Her New York Times obituary and a Kampong publication describe her achievements (she is best known as ‘The Savior of The Kampong’) and include her honorary doctorate from Wilson. For Wilson, however, her support of the Sri Lankan students had far-reaching value and lasting impact — a demonstration of her insight and vision.

She married Edward C. Sweeney in 1938. He (Williams Col- lege, Northwestern Law School graduate and professor, U.S. Navy Air during WWII) became a successful aviation lawyer in Washington, D.C. after the war. He was also president of the Explorers Club of America for two years and funded the Sweeney Medal awarded by the club. He died in 1967 at 61.

Philanthropy

The Sweeneys’ shared interests led to promoting many causes supported primarily by Catherine’s fortune. One example was financing several expeditions to Antarctica led by Finn and Edith Ronne in the 1940s (Ronne, a Norwegian born U.S. citizen, was earlier part of two Richard E. Byrd expeditions to the South Pole), and thus the Antarctic’s Sweeney Mountains were named, with five peaks named for their children.

In 1963, Sweeney was approached by Elva Fairchild, who was familiar with her philanthropy and interest in gardens. Fairchild asked her to help save her father-in-law David Fairchild’s Coconut Grove, Fla., home and tropical garden from developers. Fairchild was a famous botanist and international plant explorer who introduced over 30,000 species to the U.S. The Sweeneys had visited The Kampong years earlier, so she was intrigued and agreed immediately, thus preserving the property, which later was designated part of the National Tropical Botanical Garden.