Bynum Weaver to be honored with Hall of Fame induction

The Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce will induct six business leaders and families into its Hall of Fame on Nov. 13. The Daily Tar Heel will feature each of its inductees. Bynum Weaver will be among those inducted.

Bynum Weaver was a hard worker, the owner of a funeral home and grocery store and one of Chapel Hill’s most well-loved caretakers.

“He contributed by what he was doing. He was a giver,” said Michael Parker, one of Weaver’s former employees at the Bynum Weaver Funeral Home at 113 N. Graham St., now named Knotts Funeral Home.

“If he wasn’t at the funeral home business, he was at the grocery store; if he wasn’t at the grocery store, he was at the funeral business,” said Wanda Weaver, Bynum Weaver’s daughter.

“He would stay as many hours as he could, sometimes 24 hours, to be there for the whole community. That was impressive to me.”

Bynum Weaver, who died in 1978, was a licensed funeral director and the home’s sole operator.

“He ran all of the staff,” Wanda Weaver said. “He ran the order of how things would go out and handled it with families. He would pick up the bodies. He sometimes dressed the body.”

She said Bynum Weaver also took care of getting to know the families of the deceased.

“You had to ask them what church they wanted the funeral to be in or what they wanted to wear,” she said. “He had to find out if there was a family plot where the person could be buried, one of the cemeteries in Chapel Hill or somewhere else.”

Parker said Bynum Weaver didn’t turn anyone away, paying for funerals of those whose families couldn’t afford it.

“If someone died in your family but you didn’t have money, he would still go and bury him,” Parker said.

Fred Battle, Bynum Weaver’s nephew, said he was an outstanding person for the community, not just in personality but in making personal donations as well, including a donation for football team uniforms at Lincoln High School.

Parker said he looked up to Bynum Weaver.

“To me, he was more like a godfather; he was like a friend of my family. He gave me my job when I was nine years old in the ’60s,” Parker said.

“He helped me as an employer. He knew my wife’s family; they lived next door to him. Anything we needed, he would help us. He was as encouraging as possible.”

Parker said Bynum Weaver helped him get into technical school, paying his tuition and letting Parker work for him on weekends and in the summers.

Wanda Weaver emphasized her father’s kind demeanor and said it was hard for him to say no to people in need.

“He was a very quiet, calm person, always smiling,” she said. “I never saw my dad upset about anything.”

She said her father believed that when people made mistakes, it was probably the result of something in their lives they could not control.

“He never took that personally,” she said.

Wanda Weaver said she couldn’t pinpoint exactly what made her dad the man he was.

“It was just his character,” she said. “Maybe it was his belief in God and his love for God. And he just loved people.”

city@dailytarheel.com