Norman Beaver(1924-2004)

Church of Christ minister and certified public accountant, and father of actor Jim Beaver. Born to Joe and Beulah (Bell) Beaver on a farm near Iowa Park, Texas, he was the youngest boy of ten children. He attended school in the now non-existent town of Clara, Texas, and graduated from Iowa Park High School. He then attended Abilene Christian College before joining the U.S. Army and serving as an anti-tank gunner in the Philippines during World War II. After the war, he was part of the Occupation Forces in Japan for a year before returning to college. He became a minister for various Churches of Christ in Texas. In 1949, he married Dorothy Crawford in Cameron, Texas, then moved with her to Laramie, Wyoming, where he attended graduate school at the University of Wyoming and where his son was born. Subsequently he took his family to Fort Worth, Texas, where he worked simultaneously as a preacher and as an accountant for various oil and pipeline companies. The family moved in 1955 to Irving, Texas, in which city he lived for the remainder of his life. In his seventies, retired as a minister but still working as a CPA, he fell victim to a mysterious brain ailment which slowly robbed him of speech and movement but left his mental faculties intact. He died on May 16, 2004, survived by his wife, their son, and three daughters.