Obituaries

James Douglas Weaver, aka Jim, Uncle Jim, and Daddy, was born on April 30, 1938 at the family home on the corner of Louisville Road and Dug Gap Road. For many years, if you said “Weaver’s Corner,” everyone in Louisville knew exactly where that was. He was the last of nine children born to Della Loy Weaver and Verlin Weaver. The story was that when he was born, he was dropped on his head. At least that’s what his older siblings always said. As you might imagine, being the youngest of nine children, “Jimmy,” as they called him, did get picked on. As a boy, he would walk in his sleep, and one night his brothers told him that his bicycle was in a tree, so he walked outside in his undershorts and climbed a tree to get it down. He remembers his oldest brother, Hanover, writing home from Europe during World War 2 asking for warm socks, as it was extremely cold up in the air on his missions as a tail gunner over Nazi-occupied Western Europe. He wore a lot of second-hand clothing, and he remembers getting his first new coat, purchased at Proffitt’s on the corner of Broadway and Cusick (where Bill Cox Furniture is now) when he was in the 4th grade. As a young boy, he would make a little extra money by mowing yards. Those were the days before power lawn mowers, and he remembers cutting one of the Louisville School teacher’s yards with a manual lawn mower for $4.00. He did graduate to a gas-powered mower for another neighbor’s yard, but the fee remained $4.00. He lived just down the road from Louisville School and walked to school everyday, except in 6th grade when he drove himself to school in his older brother’s A-model. In those days, when it snowed, there was no getting up and turning on the radio to see if classes in Blount County Schools were canceled. The bus drivers, one of whom was Moose Robinson, just put chains on their tires and made their rounds. Fun Fact: Moose was also Connie and Chrissy’s bus driver in middle school and high school. When Jim was in the 2nd grade, he remembers hearing a commotion up the road one day after school. He went to investigate and saw that the school building was on fire. He remembers seeing people throw chairs, desks, and books out the windows but doesn’t remember any fire trucks showing up. Of course, he and his classmates were excited because they thought “No School!” However, about two weeks later, school officials had put partitions up in the gym, which was separate from the school building on the hill behind it, and two grades met in each section. He remembers students throwing chalk over the partitions. While at Louisville School, Jim played basketball and baseball. He told stories of playing teams like Walland and Friendsville. His ragtag Louisville Warriors team especially enjoyed beating Friendsville, a team with more affluent players by the standards of the day. While at Louisville, it was hit or miss, unfortunately, when it came to high-quality educators. Some years he had a teacher that really made them buckle down, and other years, the teacher was just there to cash a paycheck. When Jim was in the 7th or 8th grade, he remembers Mr. Brooks asking him to drive him to Maryville to pick up some medicine, which he did. A lack of consistent quality educators caught up to him when he enrolled in Friendsville High School. However, he was not only ill-prepared for high school academically, but he was from a family of poor but hard-working farmers who couldn’t afford to buy him new school clothes. As a result, he said that some of the Friendsville “rich kids” made fun of the way he dressed. So, one day at the end of the first semester, he just got up and left school and walked back home up the railroad tracks between Friendsville and Louisville and never went back. At the age of 18, he started experiencing arthritis. He recalls not being able to bend down to tie his shoes, so his brothers had to do it for him. He went to a number of doctors and the one that finally did the trick told him to stop eating so much sugar, after which he recovered. At the age of 27, he finally settled down and married Joann Godfrey. Their first house was on North Union Grove Rd. Then they rented a house on Louisville Rd. from the Joneses. That’s where they lived when Connie was born. By approximately 1971, they had saved up enough money to buy the supplies to build a house back on Weaver’s Corner right behind his mom’s house. By this point, it was a family of four, as Chrissy had been born. He did the vast

majority of the construction of the Weaver’s Corner house himself with the help of friends and family. This was a 2-bedroom house with a living room and a dine-in kitchen. An indoor bathroom came a year or two later. In the late 70’s or early 80’s, a den, another bedroom and a laundry room were added. In 1991, he decided to move away from Weaver’s Corner and made his final move to a 9-acre farm on Vinegar Valley Rd. in Friendsville. Throughout the years, Jim worked at, among other places, the Cotton Mill, Southern Cast Stone as a pattern maker, Candora Marble Company, at the University of Tennessee AG campus chicken farm as a maintenance worker, as a chauffeur for the Warners, and in maintenance at the Gateway Farm, a halfway house for troubled teen boys on Gravelly Hills Rd. in Louisville. There’s an old saying that goes, “Jack of all trades, master of none,” but Jim Weaver was a Jack of all trades and master of most of them. He was the “go-to” handyman for most of his friends and family for many years. Jim Weaver loved automobiles–the freedom they afforded to just get in and go, the challenge of restoring antique cars, and the competition they provided every Sunday in NASCAR. He was a loyal friend, “Uncle Jim” to many, a solid provider for his family, and the best dad ever. His family rarely went without–there was always enough food in the house, gas in the cars, and decent clothes to wear. The girls got an allowance of $5.00 a week based on doing chores around the house that they could spend however they wanted. As a Dad, Jim spent countless hours playing games both indoors and outdoors with his girls. He encouraged and enabled their hobbies: for Connie, it was helping to earn Girl Scout badges, which involved several knot-tying lessons and scouring the property for numerous leaf collections, or coming to any sporting event in which she was involved, whether it was as a player in 5th grade basketball, as the manager of the William Blount 9th grade girls basketball team throughout high school OR as a young adult on a Parks & Rec softball team. For Chrissy, it was facilitating her love of farm animals, especially horses. He built a horse barn for her at the Weaver’s Corner property and drove the horse trailer to numerous horse shows. He also allowed lambs to be kept inside the house in the bathroom at one point. He also facilitated her love of dachshunds, dog-sitting while she was at work or away on her travels. In general, he was a dad who made his girls behave and never tried to discourage their plans and dreams. Whatever they had in mind to do, he supported it and would lend a hand, if necessary. Jim always said when you run out of things to do, that’s probably a sign that the end is in sight. While he didn’t run out of things to do, he unfortunately ran out of the energy to do them. These last few years, and especially these last few months, have been challenging, and Jim definitely “did not go gently into that good night,” as the saying goes. Here’s one final story that most of us who knew Jim Weaver well can connect with. One evening, he called Connie and said that he and Momma had been driving to Knoxville on Alcoa Hwy when they saw a box fly off of a truck in front of them. They pulled over and retrieved the box. When they opened it up, there was a severed big toe inside of it. Connie was shocked and asked what they did with it. In true Jim Weaver style, he said, “We called the Big Toe Truck.” Most of his friends and family have the memory of Jim Weaver telling a great story, or pulling a harmless prank, or doing something silly that made us all just burst into laughter. We were all tremendously blessed to have him in our lives, and after we all get over the initial sadness of not having him around anymore, our memories of him will bring not sadness but gratitude, smiles and laughter.