Lenoir City High School sophomore student Conner Weaver, 15, fought a long hard battle with cancer before succumbing Thursday, Dec. 9, soon after his arrival at East Tennessee Children's Hospital.

"He is in a much better place now,"  his grandmother, Ida Weaver, said Friday. "He suffered so much. He spent the night with me two nights last week and he couldn't lie down. He had to sit up to breathe. They took him to Children's Hospital, and he died right after they got him there."

The family has requested that in lieu of flowers, contact Regina Johnson at East Tennessee Children's Hospital, to donate to the hospitals Hematology/Oncology Clinic. 

The cancer started four years ago, when Conner was 11, appearing first in his leg, Ida said. "It started in his knee. They took that out and it came back in eight months in his lungs. He's had surgery twice and couldn't get rid of it."

Doctors had informed Conner's family several months ago that improvement was not expected. "We knew this was coming, but it is never easy,"  Ida said.

Conner is survived by his mother, Mollie Anthony Weaver; father, Walter Weaver; sisters, Kassondra Henry and husband, Blake, Jessica and Amber Weaver; nephews, Ben and Alex Henry; and grandparents, Evelyn and Vaughn Lee Anthony, Raymond and Ida Weaver.