If I remember correctly, Wevers’ “Apologia pro Vita Mea” (available in a variety of sources) detailed how Dr. Wevers, from a humble farming family in Wisconsin, began studying Latin and Greek in high school. A timely word of encouragement from his teacher prompted him to go on for further studies, and he ended up mastering Arabic as well.

Just today, I was reading in Wevers’ article “The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Septuagint” (Bulletin of the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies 38, 2005) how he actually had to learn Coptic and Old Armenian just to do his critical work on LXX Genesis.
For me, this article was a real treat, because it showed that Wevers really was a “mere mortal”: He implied that when he had to learn Coptic and Armenian, he struggled with it like any normal person learning a new language. That’s priceless: One of the greatest scholars of the century was still humble enough to suggest in print that doing what he did was really tedious and hard at times.

Truly, your reward is great in heaven, Dr. Wevers.