After they had lunch together for the last time, Walter Weyrauch gave UF law professor Sharon Rush a book about a subject that had come up during their discussion.
"It's sitting on my desk right now with a note in it," Rush said.
Weyrauch, a professor emeritus of the UF Levin College of Law, died Friday.
His death was preceded by Dexter Delony, 91, also a professor emeritus at the law school, who died Thursday.
Weyrauch died from natural causes, said Debra Amirin, Levin College of Law spokeswoman.
Weyrauch, who Amirin said was in his late 80s, was a Stephen C. O'Connell chairman, taught for 51 years at the law school and retired in December 2007.
Weyrauch came to UF in 1957 after emigrating from Germany in 1952, according to the Florida Law Review.
During the 22 years they worked together, Rush said she and Weyrauch would have lunch meetings in offbeat Gainesville restaurants such as Mom's Kitchen and Mama Lo's.
Rush said Weyrauch's intellectual curiosity could take the conversation anywhere.
"You could not spend a minute with him without learning something," Rush said. "And a lot of times, you were learning about yourself."
Levin College of Law Dean Robert Jerry said Weyrauch never ended academic pursuits once he retired.
"Even in the last weeks of his life, he was working on a book manuscript," Jerry said.
Jerry said Weyrauch's influence spanned generations of students and much of his expertise lay in the unwritten rules governing human conduct.
About three weeks ago, Weyrauch attended a symposium that recognized his work as an intellectual stronghold of the university.
Rush said every minute with Weyrauch brought some new lesson with it.
"You just came away feeling electrified," she said. "I mean he was a very soft-spoken man, a very calm man, but he had this charge about him."
According to an obituary in The Gainesville Sun, Delony died from a long-term illness.
Amirin said Delony taught for more than 30 years and retired from UF in 1983.
According to the Florida Law Review, Delony taught former Governors Lawton Chiles and Reuben Askew during his time at UF.
Retired UF law professor Joseph Little, who came to UF in 1967, said Delony was the type of colleague everyone was grateful to have: kind, hardworking and dependable.
"His office and my office were close together, and we would meet almost every day," Little said.
Delony was heavily involved in his field of labor law but never touted his own causes, Little said.
Instead of pursuing self-seeking recognition, Delony sought to assess the interests in the students and the law school, he said.
"He was a man who was quietly going about his business," Little said.
