Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, May 7, 1993 TAG: 9305070146
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Weems, a longtime Roanoke resident, came to the parkway in 1935 as project manager and later was superintendent for 22 years, leaving in 1966.
His friends said his middle initial stood for "Parkway."
The 470-mile mountaintop drive connecting Shenandoah and Great Smoky Mountains national parks never would have been completed without Weems, said Bob Hope, veteran parkway landscape architect, on Thursday.
Weems had the tenacity, perseverance and political knowledge to push the drive, and it took a half-century to finish, Hope said.
When Weems left Roanoke in 1966 for a temporary assignment of helping Australia build a park system, a Roanoke Times editorial said he "left his mark in Virginia and North Carolina in the form of the parkway, a magnificent monument to his life's work."
On one of his last visits to Roanoke 10 years ago, Weems said the parkway couldn't be built today because of the excessive costs and problems with buying the right of way.
In his first job at the parkway, Weems bought land for $2.50 an acre, and the cost of building the road was about $50,000 a mile. When the last link along Grandfather Mountain was completed in the late 1980s, the construction cost was more than a half-million dollars per mile.
When he started buying land, Weems drove a car bearing the letters "DA" because the work was financed by a Department of Agriculture branch. He received a cool reception because mountain people thought he was a district attorney.
Weems had a story for every curve on the parkway, and many of them were recorded on tape for records of the National Park Service.
During his service, the parkway was chosen as "America's Most Scenic Highway" and it became the most heavily visited unit of the National Park Service.
A native of Marietta, Ga., Weems once had hopes the parkway would be extended from near Asheville, N.C. into the Blue Ridge Mountains of his home state but that plan was never financed.
He graduated from Georgia Tech and worked as a valuation engineer for the Norfolk and Western Railway and as a Federal Land Bank appraiser until he came to the parkway.
Weems received the Interior Department's Distinguished Service Award in 1966. After leaving Roanoke, he was assistant to the Atlanta regional director of the National Park Service and superintendent of Cumberland Island National Seashore on the Georgia coast.
Late in his career, Weems became internationally recognized among park executives. He helped Japanese officials prepare a scenic parkway plan; he was director of national parks and wildlife for New South Wales, Australia; and he was parks adviser in New Zealand, Turkey and India.
In retirement, he lived at Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., with his wife, Sarah. He also is survived by two stepchildren, Cottrell Graves of Chattanooga, Tenn., and Lucy Ashby Currie of Baltimore.
A funeral service will be private. The family requested prayers in lieu of other remembrances.
by CNB