Tim Walz is Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate for the 2024 presidential election, and he has three siblings: brothers Jeff and Craig, and his sister Sandy Dietrich.
Tim Walz was elected governor of Minnesota in 2018 and then reelected in 2022. Before that, he served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for twelve years. Before his political career, Tim Walz served in the Army National Guard for 24 years, retiring in 2005.
Previously, Tim Walz was a high school teacher and coach in Minnesota and in his home state of Nebraska, where he was raised by his two parents, Darlene and James F. Walz.
Tim Walz will face Ohio Senator JD Vance in their first vice presidential debate airing Tuesday, October 1 on CBS.
Here’s what you need to know about his three siblings.
Tim Walz’s family
Tim Walz, 60, is one of four children born to Darlene and James F. Walz. His father was a teacher and school inspector who died when Tim Walz was a teenager.
“Tim’s parents instilled in him the values of public service, generosity to your neighbors and working for the greater good,” his official state biography says.
Tim Walz’s brothers and sister
Tim Walz, his brother Jeff Walz and his sister Sandy Dietrich all graduated from Chadron State College in Nebraska, the state where they grew up. A 2019 story on the Chadron State website notes that Jeff Walz lives in Florida, while Dietrich lives in Alliance, Nebraska.
His younger brother, Craig Walz, tragically died in 2016 at the age of 43 while camping with his family at a lake in Minnesota.
Craig Walz was killed when a tree fell on his campsite during a powerful storm near Duncan Lake in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, according to NBC Minnesota affiliate KARE. He was a chemistry, calculus and geometry teacher and previously a football coach at St. Charles High School in Minnesota.
“He is a very selfless, warm-hearted man. He always has a smile on his face,” one of his former students told KARE.
“Teaching was Craig’s passion and he cared deeply about the success of his students. He often arrived early and left late to teach students who wanted some extra help,” according to his obituary in the Norfolk Daily News.
“With what he learned growing up, he also worked to instill a sense of civic responsibility in his students. On Earth Day, he held a friendly competition to see which team of students could pick up the most litter during a 90-minute class period. And in 2007, when flooding hit the St. Charles area, Craig – then the head football coach at St. Charles – gave his football team a choice: continue practicing or help the community recover and rebuild. The players chose the latter.”
This article was originally published on TODAY.com
