Marta Weeks

Marta Joan Sutton Weeks, age 93, died on 9/1/23 at Hobe Sound, Florida. Daughter of Anne Newman and Fredrick A. Sutton, she was born May 24, 1930, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where her father worked as a petroleum exploration geologist. She returned to the U.S. at age two and spent her early years in Holladay, Utah, attending the Oakwood School before moving to Maracaibo, Venezuela, where she spent five years attending the Bella Vista School. At age thirteen, with her father’s help, she started a small popcorn business for the outdoor oil camp movie-goers. Marta graduated from St. Mary-of-the-Wasatch High School (1947) in Salt Lake City, Utah; attended Beloit College in Wisconsin, then went to Stanford University, where she obtained a degree in Political Science (1951). Summers were spent working for Mene Grande Oil Co. and the Centro-Venezolano Americano in Caracas, Venezuela, where she taught English. In August 1951, she married geologist Lewis Austin Weeks, in Utah, and subsequently lived in Colorado, California, and Maryland before moving to Miami, Florida, in 1967. In 1988, she returned to graduate school in Austin, Texas, earned a Master’s Degree in Theology, and was ordained an Episcopal priest in 1992. Her ministry took her from a chaplaincy at Jackson Memorial Hospital, to Panama, the Bahamas, the American Cathedral in Paris, to interim work in Utah and the Diocese of Southern Florida. The International Solar Energy Society awarded her their first honorary life membership in 1998. She was a director of her father-in-law’s company, Weeks Petroleum, Ltd., Omni-Lift Corp., the Weeks Air Museum, founding member and President of the Stanford Club of Florida, member of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church Foundation, Board member of the SE Episcopal Foundation, member of the Rivera and Hidden Valley Country Clubs, trustee of Bishop Gray Inns, trustee of Beloit College, an honorary trustee associate with her husband of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, and was on the University of Miami Board of Trustees for twenty-six years where she was their first woman Chairperson from 2007 to 2009. A member of the National Advisory Council of the University of Utah, she was instrumental in getting a building erected on that campus honoring her father, geologist Fredrick A. Sutton. She is listed in Who’s Who of American Women and Who’s Who in the World. Her ministry extended to the homeless and hungry. For several summers, she planted, harvested, and delivered several tons of all kinds of vegetables to a soup kitchen in Salt Lake City. Marta was well-traveled; she enjoyed golf and all kinds of water sports and skiing. With her husband, she was very active philanthropically. Her name is on the YMCA building in Miami, a Music School building at the University of Miami, as well as, a Center at the Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest, in Texas. Chairs and scholarships carry her name at a number of schools. She was also a supporter of the Center for Sexuality and Religion. She was a member of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, both as a Chaplain and a Dame, and received a Doctorate in Humane Letters from the University of Utah in 2005. In 2014, she donated her Palmetto Bay Homestead to the Deering Estate, which included more than seven acres of pristine native tropical hardwood hammock. After her husband of 54 years, Lewis Austin Weeks, passed in 2005; she married Karleton Wulf, who was also a widower from St. Andrews Church in Miami, Florida, on September 1, 2009. When Karl passed in 2020 at age 98, she spent her final years living at her daughter Leslie’s home on Jupiter Island. She is survived by her son, Kermit Austin Weeks (wife Teresa), daughter Leslie Anne Davies (husband Ed), granddaughter Katie Weeks, and grandsons, Bryce and Cole Davies. Funeral services will be held at 11:00 a.m., Saturday, September 23, at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, 14260 Old Cutler Road, Miami, Florida. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made to either St. Andrew’s Endowment fund or the University of Miami Music Scholarship fund. Cremains will be interned in Utah.

Marta Weeks

May 24, 1930 - September 1, 2023