By Kathy Oswalt-Forsythe
Doris and Lee Weick, longtime community members and small business owners, left financial gifts that are making a difference today.
The Weicks owned and operated Doris-Lee’s Sweet Shop” near the corner of Main and Prairie in downtown Vicksburg. They were first known for their homemade ice cream and soda fountain and for the chocolates and candies available by the pound. But times change, and like most successful businesspeople, to survive, they had to adapt. They eventually adjusted their business, closing the soda fountain and added Hallmark cards and several lines of fine gifts.
They didn’t have children, but they took an active interest in area children. Lee mentored many young people who delivered papers for him. When they closed the business, the Weicks donated the soda fountain and other artifacts to the Vicksburg Historical Society, where volunteers built a new “Sweet Shop” to resurrect the old store front.
The Weicks worked hard and lived modestly their whole lives, and in their estate plan they left sizable financial gifts to the Vicksburg United Methodist Church. These gifts were so generous, that the earnings from the invested, endowed funds provide annual scholarships to students at the church. And most recently, their planning made possible a $16,000 gift to Vicksburg elementary schoolteachers in September.
Lee died in 1990; Doris in 2005. But the kindness of this community-minded couple continues to impact the community and the future.