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.