REMEMBERING: GO REST HIGH ROCKET MAN - Jim Weaver 1951-2008

(04/26/2024)
April, 2008

Jim Weaver 1951-2008

Go rest high on that mountain,
Son, you work on earth is done,
Go to heaven a shoutin'
Love for the Father and Son.

By Bob Weaver

He was not ten-years-old when Jim Weaver would come to visit at the Village of Hur. My dad, his uncle, thought he was the greatest.

It was here I spent slow time with Jim, going out to "the point" in our meadow to look at the universal sky, trying to spot some UFOs (unidentified funny objects).

It was our favorite pastime, staring at the moon, planets and stars, trying to make sense of life.

I think we concluded it was really too much for us to figure out.

We filled large balloons with gas, attaching our names and sending them aloft, to be retrieved in far away places.

We played with electronic devices, crude they might be, and read books and climbed over rocks and crawled back in holes.

A not yet 10-year-old Jim already had boundless curiosity

Yesterday, during his memorial service at the Mt. Zion church, if nothing else was learned about Jim's life, it was his ceaseless curiosity about all things around him, a curiosity he imparted to the thousands of students that crossed his path.

A slide show tribute by his students in Okinawa, Japan detailed his teaching habits, calling him "the rocket man," ever building rockets to shoot upward.

He was a science guy from the get-go, full of awe and universal wonderment, caring deeply about our natural world and the people in it.

His daughter Jamie Hickman spoke well of his excitement over the smallest to the largest of things in God's world.

His brother, the Rev. David Weaver, recalled his childhood, and associate and friend Tim Davis spoke of his connectedness to his students, many who remember him from his teaching days in Calhoun.

While visiting us at Hur a few years ago with wife Takayo and son Alex, we spoke of children who claim they're bored, acknowledging that neither of us have ever suffered such an affliction.

"There is much to take in," he said, "More than a lifetime."

We're hopeful that Jim now understands those endless galaxies we stared upon those many years ago, and his life-long wonderment finally has some answers.

Go rest high...

Daughter Jamie recalls trips she and her dad took
and brother David said "He was a good brother"

The church was filled, taking take to remember