Stone Weeks' life to be commemorated
ALUMNI | Stone Weeks, AS ’07, was 24 when he and his brother Holt, 20, were killed in a tragic highway accident in Virginia on July 23. They were enroute to Washington, D.C., to visit their parents and friends and to attend a book party honoring historian Douglas Brinkley, for whom Stone was a research assistant at Rice University.
Stone studied history at YD and was an undergraduate teaching assistant with Prof. Guy Alchon. He worked to organize a statewide forum titled “Soldiers to Veterans: The Burdens of Conscience and a Careless Public” and assisted in the making of a documentary on the My Lai massacre. The summer before his senior year, he was an intern to Drewry N. Fennell, AS ’87, the director of the ACLU in Delaware. Stone also was a founding father of the UD chapter of Pi Kappa Phi fraternity.
“Like the finest personalities, Stone had bent heart and mind toward the martyred and forgotten children of the earth,” Alchon recalls. “By the end, he had discovered a hard-headed Hope; a mature, demanding sensibility; and a stance toward life that requires courage enough to defy, to protect and to rescue.
“Here were the constituents of a life worthy, honorable, necessary. It is left to us, then, to consider how we are diminished by this terrible subtraction. Who among us, among Stone’s generation, will arise now, like Stone, a soldier for Hope, to fight with all humility for the things that really matter?”
To commemorate the life of Stone Weeks, a memorial bench is being installed at UD in his honor at 3 p.m. on May 15 on the walkway in front of Old College. Classmates, friends and fraternity brothers are invited to attend the dedication and make a gift in memory of Stone by visiting www.udel.edu/makeagift (Please note “Stone Weeks Memorial Project” under “Other”) or calling (800) 535-4504. To read more about Stone and his brother Holt, visit the foundation their parents have established, www.stoneandholtweeksfoundation.org.
