John Weber, Obituary & Tributes

John R. Weber, age 44, Menasha, passed away at his home on January 24, 2005. John was born September 14, 1960 in Neenah, son of the late John E. and Mary A. (Feltenberger) Weber. John was known for his satirical comedy web-site. He was a talented web-site designer, and an avid collector of classic movie and entertainment memorabilia. He was the manager and part owner of Island Music for over 20 years. He loved listening to music whether composing, performing, recording or just listening.

John is survived by his brothers: Paul (Barb) Menasha; Bill (Mary) Janesville; Dave, Menasha; his sister, Peggy (Bob) Fischer, River Falls; his nieces and nephews: Angela, Luke, Laura, Andy, Matt, Nick, Molly and Kate Weber, Emily and Jon Fischer.

In addition to his parents he was preceded in death by his grandparents: Art and Gertrude Feltenberger, Armin and Leila Weber.

Memorial services for John will be Saturday, January 29, 2005 at 2 p.m. at the Laemmrich Funeral Home, 312 Milwaukee St., Menasha with Deacon Jerry Cross officiating. Friends and family will be received at the funeral home on Saturday from 12:30 until the hour of the service.

To our beloved brother … By knowing that we truly love, it is never lost. It is only after death that the depth of the bond is truly felt. And our loved one becomes more a part of us than was possible in life.

We miss you.

FROM A LOCAL NEWSPAPER ARTICLE

Island Music founder’s death ends life that was creative but tragic
Jim Lundstrom column
Feb. 13, 2005

While listening to a CD produced in the home studio of the late John Weber, I was struck by a twangy rocker called “Two Sides to Every Story.”

That seems to be the story of Weber’s life.

This could be seen as the sad story of a lonely man who died on the floor of his Menasha home last month at the age of 44.

Or it could be seen as the story of a man who, despite grim personal circumstances, won friends and influenced people through his own good humor and unstoppable creativity.

Weber lost his parents early (his father when he was 18 and his mother a year later), lost his health, lost his health insurance when he needed it most, lost the business he started more than 20 years ago, lost hope of ever having his own family, yet he never lost his own creative drive, which he unleashed mainly in his home-built recording studio and online.

As one of his many cyber friends said, despite whatever might have been going on in the real world, Weber was able to shine online.

“John was an artist trapped in an accountant’s body,” Kim Kalfahs said. “He was a brilliant writer. His dream was to be a writer.”

Kalfahs befriended Weber when she was hired as office help at Island Music, the Neenah music store Weber founded in partnership with Randy Stinski in 1985.

“Me and John just kinda clicked right away,” she said. “We became close friends.”

Kalfahs was probably the last person to see Weber alive when she gave him a lift to get groceries and cat food on Jan. 18.

She was also the one to find him dead on the floor of his home on Jan. 25. She had gone to his home with a Social Services worker to talk about Weber entering a free 90-day clinic.

“That’s when I found him,” she said. “The coroner thought he had passed away either Wednesday night or Thursday (January 19th or 20th).”

Weber was diagnosed with cirrhosis in 2001 and was hospitalized in August of that year. Just two weeks after that, his insurance company declared bankruptcy and he remained uninsured up until his death.

Weber was extremely proud of Island Music and how he and Stinski had made it grow. Stinski handled instrument repair and sales. Weber took care of the books.

“A lot of partnerships never work out, but John and I always got along,” Stinski said. “We’d still be partners to this day if he just wouldn’t have gotten sick. It was just a shame.

“He worked for a number of months but he was so medicated that he could hardly keep his eyes open,” he said. “You could just see his health was failing miserably. At that point I sent him home as basically a silent partner.”

Eventually the partnership was dissolved and Weber received a weekly payment from the store.

“He had no source of income other than the weekly payment,” Kalfahs said. “A 44-year-old man having to find a job. But he was so sick. Everything that he worked for, his dream, was gone. He became withdrawn.”

But Weber continued to make music, write, design Web sites and participate in Internet newsgroups such as rec.music.beatles and alt.music.pink-floyd.

He created a band called Lielock, for which he wrote, performed and produced all the music.

“Lielock is a phony name for a band,” he wrote on a CD he called “Cold Hope, Early Thaw.” “Lielock is me. If you hate my music, blame the band. It isn’t my fault.”

He showed a strong Onion-esque satiric streak, a muscle he exercised on the Internet through various Web sites, including his own, johnnydupe.com.

Included among his web site design clients were the Exclusive Co., Tom’s Garage and Larry “The Soup Nazi” Taylor from “Seinfeld.”

“John was a very generous friend,” Taylor said.

They met via e-mail when Taylor was looking for someone to develop a Web site to sell Soup Nazi merchandise.

“I checked out John’s Johnny Dupe site and liked it for its freedom and informality and humor,” he said. “He then developed my Web site (www.soup nazi.tv).

“I would always offer to pay him for Web site work but he would never accept anything. He wanted some of my autographed photos for his family and I had enough trouble getting him to take them without paying me.”

“He was very successful in his Web site design,” said Weber’s sister, Peggy Fischer of Black River Falls. “He had a couple of clients, but that was expanding quite rapidly.”

As executor of his estate, Fischer is just beginning to learn how far John’s net was cast.

“There are a lot of things I didn’t know about and he didn’t share with me,” she said. “It’s wild. I was in contact with a gentleman from England who said he and John were working on music together and a CD. I have a letter from someone in Florida who has most of John’s music because they did share an Internet life. Music was always part of his life.”

Marty Schwartz, of Edmonton, Canada, befriended Weber through the rec.music.beatles newsgroup, which he had participated in since 1997.

“He was, for many people, one of the first people you’d meet online,” Schwartz said. “I used to joke with him that he should have been a Canadian. His generosity and kindness-to-a-fault seemed much closer to the Canadian stereotype than I, a genuine Alberta boy, could ever hope to reach. That was just John.”

Schwartz said Weber loved to share his music with friendly people in the newsgroup.

“Sometimes these were just instrumental ditties, sometimes full-out covers of his favorites, and sometimes they were pieces of humorous art. He once wrote an ode to rec.music.beatles, calling it ‘RMB’ and singing it to the tune of ‘Let It Be.’ His talents were widely admired and very respected.”

Schwartz said Weber’s cyber presence would be sorely missed.

“I have been floored by the response,” he said. “I have met some wonderful lifelong friends through my stint in the Beatles’ group, but I don’t think there’s one of them who was so universally loved and admired so as to trigger such a tremendous response and outpouring of grief.”

Scott Arthur started out as a customer at Island Music and eventually went on to become an employee and one of Weber’s closest friends.

“I would go there just to talk and hang out. That’s the kind of place it was,” he said. “A lot of people would go there just to see John, especially on Saturdays when he was there alone.”

Arthur said he and Weber shared the same sense of humor.

“Right from the get-go, his sense of humor and mine matched up really well,” he said. “We got it, so to speak, when we had jokes to tell. Other people might not, but we got it. It was fun working there, fun to be around him. We found humor in day-to-day life. It was ‘Clerks,’ but in a music store.”

Now in his eighth year at the music store, Arthur is battling his own as-yet undiagnosed illness so he understands how Weber must have felt about his own failing health.

“Everyone gets all high and mighty about John’s illness,” he said. “It could happen to anybody.”

Arthur wanted to confront Weber about his drinking.

“I was so mad that he drank again that I was going to take a gun and go to his house and slam it on the table. I wanted to shock him,” he said. “But I didn’t do that. I didn’t want to hurt him. I always wanted him to think he had an ally.”

Arthur said Weber felt a great deal of emptiness in his life, which led to the drinking.

“I think he was very lonely,” he said. “If 10 years ago he could have had a job writing and a family, I think he would have done a lot better. Alcohol gave him something to do. A lot revolved around that because he didn’t have a family.”

But his sister, Peggy Fischer, said there are two sides to every story.

“I spent a lot of time talking to him on the telephone the last few months, and he was thinking he was rounding the corner on a few things,” she said. “He had been feeling very, very healthy. He was a happy man, right to the end, and he did not expect to die.”

“John passing like that made me think that everybody, all of us, know somebody they could call and say, ‘Look, I haven’t talked to you in a while,’” Arthur said. “Everybody knows somebody who could use a phone call now and then.”