William F. Weaver ’45

Bill Weaver died Nov. 12, 2013.

He entered Princeton from McDonogh School in Maryland and joined Quadrangle Club. His Princeton studies were interrupted by service as an ambulance driver with the American Field Service in Italy. He returned to college to receive a degree in English in 1946.

Bill maintained two residences — one in Front Royal, Va., and the other in Rome, where he spent a good part of his life. In 1965 he moved to the town of Arezzo in southern Tuscany, from which he translated Italian novels and wrote on a number of subjects, especially music. In 1990 he began teaching in the creative-writing department at Princeton and became a professor at Bard College in New York.

Before Bill suffered a stroke and entered a retirement home, he won many awards, including the National Book Award in 1969. His publisher described him as “one of the great Italophiles of his generation, a tremendously engaged and knowledgeable lover of both Italian music and literature, who became an essential part of the Italian scene.”

Bill never married. He is survived by four nephews, to whom the class extends sympathy.