Everyday, in the autumn of 2004 Tim Carraher lost himself among the cypresses, cedars, and sequoias in the Jardin des Prébendes d’Oé.
Advocacy for the underdog would ultimately define the rest of Tim’s life, but first he needed to find peace on the pathways of the garden, a 19th-century English-style oasis in the center of Tours, France.
His senior year at Boston College bruised him. As a director of a gay and lesbian support group, Tim was a staunch advocate for his community, making him a target for students and administrators who opposed its presence at the Jesuit university. The animus played out in competing student newspapers, and more uncivilly with slurs and vandalism.
Before his time at Boston College, Tim was a beloved friend and student at St. Giles School and Fenwick High School in Oak Park, Illinois, where he would begin collecting life-long friends. At Fenwick, he was a treasured member of the Blackfriars Guild, the club that fostered his lifelong love of musicals. Tim excelled academically, leading him to becoming a Presidential Scholar at BC.
After graduating from college, Tim spent a year teaching English in the small city on the Loire River in western France. Once there, he found another community among students and teachers, and a love of good wine and food.
And then there was the jardin, located steps from his apartment, a quiet refuge for self-reflection, where he built trust in his own tastes and instincts.
He took that confidence to Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, and then to the Sorbonne in Paris, where he earned a master’s degree in global business law. His studio apartment in the Marais District became a test kitchen for his budding culinary ambitions, and a gathering place for friends to eat his first attempts at boeuf bourguignon and pot-au-feu, while drinking wine into the wee hours of the morning. Among the visitors was Tim’s future husband Patryk Piwinski, whom he met the year before at Sidetracks, one of Chicago’s oldest LGBTQ+ bars.
Tim returned to Chicago and the young couple moved in together. While Tim accepted a job offer from a law firm, it was hit hard by the 2008-2009 recession, and he was furloughed. This led him to volunteer with the civil rights organization Lambda Legal where he worked on a seminal Ohio case that established the right of LGBTQ+ parents to seek legal custody of their children. Through Lambda, he also defended the right of the state of Wisconsin to provide LGBTQ+ couples with domestic partnership protections even though the state had previously enacted a constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex couples from marrying.
In 2011, Tim accepted a position at the global law firm Reed Smith, specializing in commercial litigation, while also pursuing a pro bono advocacy representing asylum seekers, for which he was lauded by the National Immigrant Justice Center, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.
Over time, Tim would also lend his brilliant writing skills to the team at Lambda that helped legalize same-sex marriage in Illinois, a victory he anticipated when proposing to Patryk a year earlier.
Throughout his career Tim continued to support Lambda with nearly 2000 hours of pro-bono work, and with Patryk as financial contributors. Overall, the work he did for the organization contributed to the legal building blocks that were put in place across the country to argue Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark United States Supreme Court case that guaranteed same-sex couples the right to marry in all 50 states.
This paved the way for his marriage to Patryk. At their September 2015 ceremony in the verdant flower garden of Humboldt Park in Chicago, they each adopted the portmanteau Carwinski as surnames.
Much like that studio apartment in the Marais, the Carwinski home was the center of a galaxy of friends, family, and chosen family—including their two cats Lillet Blanc and Cointreau Jr. Countless evenings were highlighted by karaoke parties, backyard movie nights, and elaborate dinners soundtracked by Tim’s earnest turns at the piano. These domestic celebrations were only interrupted by his tireless pursuit of live theater, international travel, Cubs games at Wrigley Field, and trips to the National Figure Skating Championships, where the shimmering sequined outfits he sported with his sister Sam became a reliable feature on television broadcasts.
Tim exercised his mind like a muscle, capturing a mastery of world history, French wine, Broadway musicals, and the Harry Potter universe, which he deployed as an online trivia master among dozens of friends from all over the world. With his gift for language he added to his French and Latin fluency by attempting to learn Polish to communicate with Patryk’s family–one of the few things he ever failed at.
The strength of these passions was only matched by his righteous outrage at bigotry and intolerance, the current sitting Supreme Court, direct sunlight, boats, eating with his fingers, and ground black pepper.
The communities Tim built and nurtured circled him tightly when he was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer at the age of 42. At home and during farewell trips to France, Spain, Poland, New York, and Germany the strands of connection he threaded throughout his life grew stronger. Those connections are the legacy he leaves.
Timothy Robert Carwinski (nee Carraher) passed away on June 19, 2026, Juneteenth. He would want us to remember that on this day of great significance, the emancipation of the enslaved was the root cause of the Civil War.
Tim strongly believed in organ donation and as his last act of advocacy donated his corneas through the Gift of Hope Organ & Tissue Donor Network.
The Tim Carwinski Performing Arts Foundation will further honor his memory by working to expand access to performing arts education and programming for young people, ensuring that the music, theater, and stagecraft he loved are within reach for the next generation.
A portion of his ashes will be spread in the Jardin des Prébendes d’Oé in Tours.
In his final days, Tim was surrounded by the people he brought together in life, including his heroic husband, Patryk Carwinski (nee Piwinski); his adoring mother, Carol Carraher (nee Pink); devoted sister, Samantha Carraher; stoic brother-in-law, Christopher Jasculca; cherished niece and nephew, Addison and Brady Jasculca (of Samantha and Christopher); and Tim’s legion of friends, who walked beside him in life. Tim was a loving son to Carol Carraher and the late Robert “Bob” Carraher; a caring stepson to JoAnn Carraher (nee Kahnke); stepbrother to Shawn, Mitchell (Danielle) and Brett (Lindsey) Hesley; an endeared son-in-law to Mietek Piwinski and Janina Piwinski (nee Syta); treasured brother-in-law to Dawid Piwinski; and prized grandson to his adoring grandmother Elizabeth “Grandma Betty” Hortsman and late grandparents John “Jack” Pink, and William “Bill” and Mary Carraher.
Tim was nephew and cousin to many, including Uncle Don McKay; the late Uncle Bill and Aunt Donna Carraher and their children Katie (Jon) Harris (nee Carraher) and Brian (Amanda) Carraher; Aunt Maryelizabeth Kula (nee Carraher) and Uncle Jim Kula and their children Taylor Kula (Pedro Rodriguez) and McKenzie Mason (Jeff); Uncle John Carraher and his children Colleen Carraher (Mark Chesser), Danny Carraher, Kevin Carraher, and their mother Sheila Montroy, and John’s life partner Shari Samson, and her children Taylor Acree (Chad) and Hunter Samson; late Uncle Tom Carraher and his children Alison (Erin) Power and Megan Carraher, and their mother Eileen Carraher; Uncle Jim Carraher and Aunt Susan Carraher and their children Christopher Schauer (Alex), Lindsey (Jon) Ladner, and Amanda (Christopher) Loya.
–Mike Sula