Margaret K. Weaver

1930 - 2022

News story
By Mark Zaborney
Blade staff writer

FREMONT - Margaret K. Weaver, a pioneering lawyer and then judge in Sandusky County who taught high school math while attending law school, died Jan. 9 at Paramount Senior Care in Pittsburgh. She was 91.

She had Alzheimer's disease the last decade, said her daughter Melissa "Lisa" Weaver.

Judge Weaver stepped down from Sandusky County Common Pleas Court at the end of January, 2003, after 18 years on the bench. By law, she could not seek another term because she was over 70.

She had a reputation for efficiency and decisiveness. She was known for handling as many as two dozen cases in a day, such as marriage dissolutions and sentencings, The Blade reported at her retirement.

Her courtroom ran smoothly, and she was fair, said John Kolesar in 2003. Then a county assistant prosecutor, he now is a Sandusky County Common Pleas judge.

"She's probably one of the most organized judges I've worked with," he said then.

Judge Weaver regarded staying on schedule as part of the duty she took on when she became a judge.

"I can decide a case, put it aside, and forget about it," Judge Weaver told The Blade in 2003.

She was part of a three-judge panel that in 1999 sentenced a Clyde man to the death penalty for killing a Fremont bartender during a robbery. The Ohio Supreme Court later overturned the sentence, citing a prosecution error. Judge Weaver in 2002 resentenced the man to a 20-year-to-life prison term.

She said in 2003 that she had no trouble agreeing to the death sentence and was not upset when it was overturned.

"I think we did what the law required, and that's what I'm sworn to do," Judge Weaver said then. "I have no compulsion to be God, and so I was kind of relieved to be lifted from that responsibility."

Attorneys appearing in front of her did not doubt she made decisions according to the law and informed by her moral sense, her daughter said.

"What served her most was her very apparent and strong moral compass," her daughter said.

Juanita Bennett, her secretary from 1988-2003, recalled some who appeared in Judge Weaver's courtroom returning to thank her for their incarceration.

"They needed control in their lives, and they came back and said, 'The best thing you ever did was send me away for a year, because I needed it,'" Ms. Bennett said.

Her court employees felt they were working with her, not just for her, Ms. Bennett said.

"She was so supportive of her staff. It was a real team," Ms. Bennett said.

Known to family and friends as Peg or Peggy, she was born Oct. 26, 1930, in Johnstown, Pa., to Anna and William Kettles. She grew up in Swissvale, adjacent to Pittsburgh, and was a 1948 graduate of Swissvale High School. She received a bachelor of English degree from Maryville College in Tennessee and became an administrative assistant at Union Carbide in Oak Ridge, Tenn., where her husband was a metallurgist – although they met in the young adult group of the Presbyterian Church they attended.

The new family in time moved to the Pittsburgh area - eventually to the house where she grew up - and she continued her education, receiving a math degree from the Carnegie Institute of Technology and a master's degree in education from the University of Pittsburgh.

"She was always an interesting combination of being creative and analytical. She loved math," her daughter said.

The family moved to northwest Ohio when her husband was hired by what was then Brush Beryllium. She taught mathematics at Gibsonburg High School and pursued a childhood ambition by taking night law classes at the University of Toledo.

As she approached retirement, she recalled her plans for a legal career were inspired by a radio soap opera, Portia Faces Life.

"She was an attorney and that just took hold of me. Isn't that silly?" Judge Weaver said in 2003. A high school guidance counselor told her to abandon her plans.

"She said girls should not be lawyers," Judge Weaver said then. "She told me I should be a teacher instead so I could be home in the summers with my children."

She completed her law studies and was admitted to the Ohio Bar in November, 1973. Afterward, she and lawyer Nancy Scranton opened the first all-woman law office in Fremont.

She served on the Fremont school board from 1974-77. She was a Junior Achievement and Red Cross volunteer.

She was a member of First Presbyterian Church, Fremont. A pianist from childhood, she could readily play most requests and made sure her children started lessons in January of first grade. Even as she dealt with Alzheimer's she played for residents and staff of her senior living home.

She and Miles Weaver married July 11, 1953. He died May 19, 2011. Their son Laird died July 4, 2012.

Surviving are her daughter, Dr. Melissa "Lisa" Weaver; sons Lance Weaver and Lon Weaver; six grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.

A memorial service will be planned later. Arrangements were by Pennsylvania-based Boylan Funeral & Cremation Care.