For a man who didn't smoke, Wes Weeks knew a lot about tobacco. During his 30 years in the crop science department at N.C. State University, Weeks was sought out by those in both academic and industry circles for his expertise in the flavor chemistry of flue-cured tobacco. In 2009, he was honored with a lifetime achievement award from the Tobacco Science Research Conference.
Weeks died July 27 after a long battle with hemochromatosis, a genetic disorder in which too much iron builds up in the body. He was 78.
Chemistry was not a likely profession for the farm boy from rural Mississippi. But Weeks' life rarely followed a predictable path.
When he was 5, he fell off the sideboard of a dairy truck, catching his left arm under the tire. Doctors said the boy's crushed arm would never heal, but his father, a tough dairy farmer, thought otherwise. For hours every day, he had little Wes throw him a baseball, over and over. His homemade therapy worked: In time, Weeks regained full use of his arm and became a star athlete.
In high school, he juggled football and marching band. When his wife, Roma, asked how he managed to change uniforms and be on the field for the band's halftime show, he said, "I'm fast." During his last year at Okolona High School, Weeks was intentionally failing a class so he could extend his football career another year. But in the spring, new rules made him ineligible. "He had to work really hard to pass that class and graduate," Roma Weeks said.
Though he enjoyed a brief career as a semipro baseball player and Golden Glove boxer, Weeks found sports in those days didn't pay much. After an accident ended his playing career, he headed to Alabama to work as a roughneck in the oil fields. The desolate area didn't offer many options for a single man needing housing. After an offhand remark by Weeks' boss, a woman in the area said: "Send him around and if I like his looks, I'll rent him our son's room." She did and he moved in. The woman's daughter remembers seeing Weeks for the first time. "I saw him standing in the hallway and I was gone." A year later, the couple married, a union that lasted more than 50 years.
Failure wasn't an option
Weeks' chemistry career could have been derailed before it started. He failed his first chemistry class at Mississippi State University. The professor was known to be tough, and Roma Weeks suggested to her husband that he retake the class with another instructor. "He refused to take it from anyone else," Mrs. Weeks said. "He said, 'That man has so much knowledge. I can learn so much from him.'" Weeks passed on his second try, and the professor became his mentor.
Weeks did his graduate studies at the University of Kentucky, where he was the first student to receive a doctorate in plant physiology. His background in tobacco biochemistry drew the attention of William H. Johnson, now professor emeritus at NCSU, and he was offered a position. Weeks moved his family to North Carolina in 1969. Over the years, Johnson and Weeks collaborated on several tobacco studies. "His expertise was widely recognized and sought after by scientists on campus and throughout the tobacco industry," Johnson said.
David Danehower nominated Weeks for the lifetime achievement award. "Wes was my favorite kind of fellow," said Danehower, professor of crop science at NCSU. "A good old country boy from the South with more than a lick of common sense and some smarts. His knowledge of tobacco chemistry and chromatographic analysis of tobacco volatiles was encyclopedic."
Guided by the Lord
Weeks took a special interest in foreign students, often taking them under his wing. "Despite coming from a rural Mississippi background where prejudice was the norm, Wes always reached out to people from different cultures and ethnic and religious backgrounds," Danehower said. At Weeks' Cary home, a curio cabinet is stuffed with trinkets from around the world, even though Weeks himself rarely left the country. "Every thing here has a story," Roma Weeks said.
For all Weeks' scientific accomplishments, it was his faith and family that were most important to him. A longtime member of First Baptist Church in Cary, Weeks taught Sunday school for many years. He once wrote, "I really feel the Lord has directed my life and blessed me by guiding me in my academic experience."
He was the family expert on banana pudding and peanut brittle, said his daughter, Kimbra Ewbank of Oglesby, Ill. His recipe was not that of a cook's, however; he worked with a chemist's mind. "It was like he was in a lab, not a kitchen. When we were making peanut brittle for his memorial service, I told Mom I was going to mess up the chemistry with all the tears.
"I am proud to be his daughter," Ewbank said. "I had a father of integrity who I could be proud of."
