Roland Weeks, Jr.

Roland Weeks, Jr., long-time Sun Herald publisher and businessman who helped pilot the Mississippi Gulf Coast through good times as well as disaster recoveries, died October 4, 2025. He was 89.

Weeks is remembered as an innovative thinker who turned a provincial Southern newspaper into a seven-day-a-week regional publication with a strong editorial voice. The Biloxi resident retired in 2001 but continued in community and civic service in the arts, community development, charity, historic preservation and developing new generations of leaders.

Weeks will be missed by his family, a cadre of friends and former newspaper employees who appreciated his unassuming ways, his ability to inspire everyone's best and his determination to make the Coast a better place to live.

Always under-stating his accomplishments, Weeks' half-century of what others describe as his “quietly effective” Coast leadership reached far beyond the newsroom. Pivotal lessons were quickly learned in the aftermath of Hurricane Camille, described in 1969 as one of the country's worst natural disasters.

Camille struck a year after the then 31-year-old newspaper greenhorn with a Clemson University mechanical engineering degree and four years as a U.S. Air Force officer, moved to the Coast from Columbia, S.C. He was serving as general manager for the South Carolina-based State Record Company's newly acquired The Daily Herald, founded in 1884 by the Wilkes family.

The Category 5 August storm flooded the Herald's Gulfport presses and turned Week's newfound home into a disaster zone. Under his leadership, the Herald missed no issues, and he soon co-chaired the Governor's Emergency Council. Weeks set a “We Will Rebuild!” example for other businesses by immediately spearheading construction of a new $1.8 million newspaper plant on DeBuys Road.

Using his philosophy of participatory management, Weeks developed the existing staff and brought in new people. Before the first decade was over, the award-winning newspaper and its staff had doubled in size and was covering previously overlooked civil rights, illegal gambling and political issues.

Weeks' vision of the strength of a united, progressive Coast instead of separate competing cities and counties helped create the Mississippi Gulf Coast Chamber of Commerce in 1988. He served as first president of the combined Chambers, whose work across municipal and county lines has led to formation of Leadership Gulf Coast, One Coast Awards and the Gulf Coast Business Council.

Weeks also led the newspaper into the 21st century while fulfilling key leadership roles in such organizations as the Mississippi Coast Community Foundation; United Way of South Mississippi; USO; Salvation Army of South Mississippi; Kid's Voting; Mississippi Board of Corrections; YMCA; Boy Scout's Pine Burr Area Council; Ohr-O'Keefe Museum of Art; the Associated Press and the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association.

Weeks received the John S. Knight Gold Medal and the Alvah Chapman Award for best performing newspaper, awarded for his initiatives after The Sun Herald joined the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain in 1986. He later served as chairman for the John S. Knight and James L. Knight Foundation's Community Board, overseeing Coast projects in development, storm recovery and the arts.

Also, Weeks served 13 years on the Mississippi Department of Archives & History board of trustees and helped administer Hurricane Katrina historic preservation grants and develop new state museums in Jackson.

Away from the civic, news and business worlds, Weeks was a lifetime adventurer, favoring airplane acrobatics, gliding, hot air ballooning, boating, skiing and cross-country motorcycling and hiking. He often entertained at regional air shows with his Great Lakes bi-plane and his Stuka, a rare 7/10's replica of the famous German dive bomber.

Weeks is preceded in death by his parents, Miriam Weeks and Roland Weeks, Sr., of Charleston, S.C.

Weeks is survived by his wife, Sharon Brune Weeks; four children: Lisa Weeks of Denver, CO Roland W. Weeks (Bj), of Birmingham, AL, Alex Weeks of Gulfport, MS, and Shelby Brune Taylor (Will) of St. Petersburg, FL; brother, Dr. Wesley Weeks of Atlanta, GA.; and five grandchildren: Christopher Weeks (Amanda), Erica Weeks Hoadley (Jacob), Tyler Weeks, Welton Stone Myrick and William Stanley Taylor. He is also survived by four great-grandchildren: Noah, Addison and McKenzie Weeks and Emma Jane Hoadley.

A Celebration of Life will be held at 11:00 a.m. on Tuesday, October 14, 2025 at Bradford-O’Keefe Funeral Home, Howard Avenue in Biloxi. Friends may visit from 9:30 a.m. until 11:00 a.m.

Weeks' wish is to have his ashes scattered on his beloved Mississippi Coast.

Bradford-O'Keefe Funeral Home is honored to serve the family of Roland Weeks, Jr.