Oliver "O.C." Weaver

Oliver Cornelius Weaver Jr., a retired professor of philosophy and religion at Birmingham-Southern College whose courses were viewed as a benchmark in the education and intellectual life of many students over five decades, died Feb. 21 at the age of 97. A graduate of BSC, Weaver co-authored the centennial history of the Methodist school in 1957, served as dean of the college in 1964-68, and in retirement wrote well-researched and compelling genealogies of his south Alabama family. He was long a familiar figure on the campus, first in the 1930s as a student, then from 1945 to 1988 as a professor of philosophy and religion, and finally in retirement as a friend of many colleagues and a fixture at BSC basketball games with his wife, Laura, also a 'Southern graduate. She died in 2005. Weaver lived on the campus from 1957, when he and Laura built a home on Greensboro Road, until 2009, when he moved to Manhattan, Kansas, to live with his son, Larry Weaver, a physics professor at Kansas State University, and Larry's wife, Gabrielle Thompson. He was in Manhattan when he died peacefully at their home. Born in Camden, Alabama, on Sept. 20, 1914, he was the second of six children of Oliver C. Weaver Sr. and Edna Lazenby Weaver, both of whom grew up in the Forest Home community of Butler County, Alabama. O.C. Weaver Jr. later would write a family history that detailed the hardscrabble origins of his 'perennially optimistic father,' who eventually would become president of his senior class at Southern University at Greensboro, Alabama, the school that would merge into Birmingham-Southern College. Weaver, whose family moved to Brewton when he was 12, graduated from T.R. Miller High School. Along with his brother Harry, who was 11 months older, he entered Birmingham-Southern in 1931, graduating in 1935. O.C. Weaver Jr. studied in 1935-36 at the Divinity School of Yale University. In 1937 he entered Garrett Theological Seminary and married Laura Ross Moore, whom he had met at BSC. He graduated with distinction from Garrett Theological Seminary in 1939 and later received his doctorate in philosophy from Northwestern. A Methodist chaplain on active duty in the U.S. Naval Reserve during World War II, he joined the faculty of Birmingham-Southern in 1945 and became a member of the Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church of Alabama and West Florida. In 1963, he received a Fulbright Scholarship to India. Weaver taught as professor emeritus at BSC from 1983 to 1988. He was named L.C. Branscomb Professor of Philosophy and, as college historian Donald Brown wrote in a 150th anniversary publication, Weaver was for nearly half a century 'a leading figure on the faculty, in the administration, and in the Methodist church.' Weaver was a member of the Birmingham Ministers Discussion Group, which met monthly to discuss serious papers on major issues confronting the church and state. In 2004, at age 90, he was the keynote speaker on the group's 75th anniversary. In the college's150th anniversary publication a short profile said it was 'the intellectual challenge of Weaver's classes and the invitation to a larger world view that former students remember most ardently.' Along with Larry Weaver in Kansas, survivors include a younger son, Kendal Weaver, a now retired Associated Press news editor, and his wife, Penny, in Montgomery, Alabama; grandchildren James Laurence Weaver and his wife, Nicole, of Chicago, Illinois; Amanda Frances Eckert and her husband, Joerg, of Marburg, Germany; Nate Thompson-Weaver of Manhattan, Kansas; Christopher Bailey and his wife, Sandy Mead, of Manhattan; and Savannah Ferster and her husband, David, of Alexandria, Virginia; and great grandchildren Nadja Anne, Angela and Niklas Oliver Eckert of Marburg; Ellis Kendal and Julia Ferster of Alexandria; and Eleanor Maxine Weaver of Chicago. A memorial service will be held at First United Methodist Church in Birmingham at a date to be announced later. Memorial donations may be made to Homecare and Hospice of Manhattan, 3801 Vanesta Dr. Manhattan, KS 66502.