Edward Weber

Mr. Ed Weber passed away in May 2008 after developing mesothelioma only three months prior. Though he and his family pursued therapy, Ed was unable to undergo treatment. He passed away gently at home, surrounded by his loving family.

Ed and his doting wife, Audrey, were pillars of the Newhall community and indeed every community where they have ever resided. Ed lived life to the fullest daily and all those who knew him loved him.

What follows are a few words by Marc Weber, Ed's son, given during the funeral, held at Mount Sinai in Hollywood Hills.

My Father, Edward Weber, Remembered
Marc Weber

My dad was a gentle, sensitive, and philosophical man, even back in the days when that was something of an embarrassment. I think he loved having a little boy to whom he could reveal himself. We would lie on his bed together when I was five or six and share my first great philosophical conversations. Where did God come from? Did God create evil? What is Infinity? Isn’t an atom sort of like a solar system – and could the solar system be an atom inside a gigantic solar system that is itself an atom inside an even bigger one?

In his entire life my father never laid a hand on me in anger. His five basic parenting tools were patience, trust, praise, forgiveness, and dialogue. There were no real consequences for bad behavior – except that you would feel terrible for hurting his feelings. Lying to him was inconceivable, but I realize now, as I think about it, that dad was just too gentle to ever force me into a position where I either had to lie or feel humiliated; he would just wait until I felt comfortable enough to tell him everything, and I just couldn’t stand for there to be any space between us, so I always would – probably lots more than he ever wanted to hear.

The hardest time between the two of us was probably in the ‘60s when I was taking acid. I know what my mom is thinking – last night we were arguing because now I won’t even buy a tub of cream cheese if it has preservatives in it. Anyway, I couldn’t exactly tell him that I was taking drugs, and believe me I wanted to – remember, this was the guy I first explored my mind with – so I would bother him with endless lectures on the Brave New World and how LSD would set us free and how great Cosmic Consciousness was. I just had to try to make him understand. This of course was a lost cause; a polio survivor who had spent much of his childhood in hospital beds hanging from the ceiling in weird contraptions doped up on morphine could never be sympathetic to the idea of a voluntary drug experience. And still he loved, forgave, and accepted me, and we just kept on talking.

I have an anecdote that I think reveals a lot about my dad. When my sister Robin was about six and I about eight our family cat got out of our ranch-style house on Vanowen Street in Canoga Park and was crunched by an oncoming car. My mother and sister and I were devastated; we were crying our eyes out. My father was his usual calming, philosophical self: the cat wasn’t suffering anymore; we could get a new kitten; sometimes these things just happen; life goes on. We were all in a kind of den at one end of the house, and he quietly left that room and walked all the way down the hall to the kitchen at the other end of the house. What my father didn’t realize is that the pass-through we had into the kitchen made it possible for me to watch everything he was doing, and I clearly saw him remove his glasses and cry HIS eyes out, when he thought that nobody was looking.

My father was born and raised in New Haven, Connecticut; Yale University was practically in his backyard. He never attended Yale as a student, but his son and grandson both did; probably because we had a few people in our lives that my father did not have. If my father had had my father as his father then you might have seen three generations of Yale graduates.

Even without a college degree my father had a brilliant career as a printing entrepreneur, and I attribute his great success to a simple but elegant four-part business model: Treat your customers and employees as family; trust everybody in the world completely; work your ass off; make no profit. I have personally followed these same precepts and after 25 years I can tell you that my pockets are empty but my heart is full. I am sure that my father would agree that this arrangement is preferable to the other way around.

I have vivid memories of my father going into the shop on a Sunday afternoon and working eight hours straight to redo an enormous job for free -- the customer had missed his own mistake when he signed the proof, but that didn’t matter to my father; he wanted everyone to be happy with his work. I also remember that he always had at least one alcoholic or drug addict on the payroll, for whom he would often pay rent, bail out of jail, talk to at odd hours of the night, and for all intents and purposes be the parent they never had. They all adored him, and I am sure they would have done anything for him.

I have a different perspective from the rest of the family because for years I lived far away. My mother tells me that at family gatherings my father would often say, “This is so nice; the whole family gathered around me – except for my stupid son who is in Iowa!” I didn’t have daily or even weekly contact with my father. What I did have and still have now are his presence in me; the way I talk, the way I think, the way I look. I can’t tell you how often I sit with a music student and discover my father’s words pouring out of my own mouth.

I was up all night with him on Friday, along with Steve and David, but I wanted to keep my gig on Saturday morning so I asked the guys at the restaurant for four shots of espresso and just sort of muscled through. But every time I took a break I would wander into the restroom and find myself staring at my face in the mirror. Finally it dawned on me why I was doing this. You see, for days I had been staring at my father; his eyes were mostly closed but occasionally he would open them – I got so that I was just yearning to see his eyes, and when I did they were so beautiful, so piercing, so very expressive. And what I saw in the bathroom mirror was that his eyes are my eyes. I am my father’s child. My flesh is his flesh. All I ever need to do, when I miss him, is to take a good look at myself because as surely as I live, he lives.

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Donations may be made to

The Pacific Heart, Lung & Blood Institute
1615 Westwood Blvd, Suite 204
Los Angeles, CA 90024

Or online via a secure network.

Notification of all tributes will be sent to the Weber Family and acknowledged on our tributes page.