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Roy Weatherford (1943-2020)
UPDATE--November 11, 2020: Please see to Roy Weatherford from Congresswoman Kathy Castor.
Roy Carter Weatherford, PhD, was born in Middlebrook, Arkansas, on May 30, 1943, when
his family lived in a log cabin without electricity. He rose from there to earn a
Harvard doctorate.
He is survived by his wife of 54 years, Doris Weatherford, as well as their daughter
Margaret Prater and son-in-law Jeffrey R. Prater of Manassas, Virginia. He was predeceased
by his parents, Rev. Frank Carter Weatherford and Winona Luter Weatherford, and a
brother, Wendell Weatherford. Surviving siblings are Gail Lawson of Missouri and
David Weatherford of Jacksonville. He leaves other loving family from California
to Maryland and from Minnesota to Texas.
Roy graduated from Arkansas Tech in 1964, and having placed in the 99th percentile
in every category of the Graduate Record Exam, he received a full fellowship to Harvard.
After a year, he joined the Army Security Agency; he and Doris married on February
8, 1966, while he was assigned near the Pentagon. He contracted tuberculosis and
was in the Army鈥檚 Valley Forge (PA) hospital for six months before returning to Harvard,
where he was a Danforth Graduate Fellow. His master鈥檚 degree thesis, 鈥淭he Heisenberg
Uncertainty Relations,鈥� won the Bectel Prize in Philosophy. He earned his doctorate
in philosophy in 1972. He and Doris moved to Tampa, and Roy taught at the University
of South Florida for 35 years; he never sought another job and, indeed, turned down
some offers.
In addition to numerous articles, he published Philosophical Foundations of Probability Theory, Implications of Determinism, and World Peace and the Human Family. Elected president of the Florida Philosophical Association, he won a place in three
summer seminars sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities. He was a
featured speaker at many conferences; the International Congress of Philosophy invited
him to present a paper in England and a Korean university paid for him and Doris to
spend a month there. Roy also developed a television course, 鈥淧rofessional Ethics,鈥�
that ran on WUSF-TV for many years. During the threat to civil liberties after 9-11,
he went on 鈥淭he O鈥橰eilly Factor鈥� several times to defend USF, which Bill O鈥橰eilly
had called a 鈥渉otbed of terrorism.鈥� One of these appearances was re-broadcast on BBC.
Devoted to academic unionism, he was singular in having been an officer in the American
Association of University Professors, the Florida Education Association, the American
Federation of Teachers, the Florida AFL-CIO, the Hillsborough County Central Labor
Council, and especially the United Faculty of Florida, of which he was president.
He also was elected to the executive board of the 3-million member National Education
Association. During the tenure of Governors Bob Graham and Lawton Chiles, he held
offices in the Florida Democratic Party. He was a guest at the White House during
Jimmy Carter鈥檚 administration and was a delegate to the national convention that nominated
President Bill Clinton.
His death on April 19, 2020, was the result of congestive heart failure and a fall
on Thanksgiving weekend. He had been in the James Haley Veterans Hospital since December
10 after complications from neck surgery.
--Doris Weatherford