Jack Weber’s here: How a 99-year-old new president reinvigorated the Riverhead Lions Club

Not many people attend the meeting of a service club for the first time and leave the meeting as the club president.

And when the new member who is immediately elevated to the position of club president is 99 years old, that’s rarified air indeed. In fact, it’s a safe bet to say it’s a first.

Yet that’s exactly what happened with Riverhead Lions Club President Jack Weber, a man who’s been a member of Lions Clubs International for 71 years and has held leadership positions in local clubs and in the international organization. 

But Weber is no ordinary Lion. 

“Jack is like a legend,” said past club president Rene Doumeng of Riverhead. Doumeng, a 51-year Lion himself. In Lions International, “he’s a celebrity,” Doumeng said. 

Weber’s celebrity status has nothing to do with the fact that he’s a club president who’s about to turn 100 — “probably the only 100-year-old president in the history of Lions International,” Doumeng mused. 

His celebrity has everything to do with his dedication to the mission of the service organization, his enthusiasm for advancing its mission, and his willingness to step up and serve — not just the communities and causes served by Lions, but also the organization itself.

Riverhead is the third club Weber has served as president in seven decades as a member of Lions Clubs International. He is a past district governor and a past international director of the organization.

Lionism is baked into Weber’s identity — so much so that half of the memoir he published last year tells the story “Lions Club International and Me.”  Written while quarantined at home during the COVID-19 pandemic— a project he started at age 96 as a legacy for his family — the first half of the book tells the story of his personal life, which now stretches back a century: recollections of growing up in the Bronx, going to the 1939 World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows as a teen, entering Marietta College in Ohio as a pre-med student at age 16, as World War II raged in Europe, enlisting in the Navy after the attack on Pearl Harbor, meeting his future wife, entering dental school as a Naval officer, and his long and successful career in dentistry, beginning in the Navy and continuing in private practice. 

Weber’s life, by any measure, has been a life well-lived: a loving wife, a family of five children, a home in the suburbs of Long Island, a prosperous career that provided the pleasures of a vacation home and international travel, many long-term friendships, lots of golf, and in his golden years, the adoration of grandchildren and great-grandchildren in a close-knit family.

His is a story emblematic of the “Greatest Generation,” his daughter Barbara Weber-Floyd, notes in the foreward  to Weber’s memoir, which Weber-Floyd, a journalist and author, edited. 

Weber’s desire to serve is an important part of that story, beginning with his enlistment in the Navy at age 18 and continuing through the present day. His profound commitment to service found expression in Lions Club International. He joined the venerated international service organization before the age of 30, on July 1, 1953, when he became a member of the Lions Club in Hicksville. He would later became the club’s president. 

“Lionism is a community service. That’s who we are,” Weber said in an interview last week. 

Lions are recognized worldwide for their service to the blind and visually impaired, answering the challenge by Helen Keller in 1925 to become “knights of the blind in the crusade against darkness.”  The organization today also undertakes service projects that tackle global issues, Weber said. Under the leadership of its current president, Patti Hill of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, Lions Club International has as its goal nothing less than “changing the world,” which it seeks to achieve “one life, one relationship, one community at a time.”  Hill has called on local clubs to focus on creating a greener, cleaner environment, working to combat hunger and improving nutrition, Weber said.

She is only the second female international president in the organization’s 107-year history. In fact, women were barred as members from Lions Clubs International until 1987, when the organization changed its constitution to allow women to join.

Weber is proud of his involvement in that change, which was controversial at the time. He was a member of the board of directors of Lions Club International when it voted to approve the constitutional amendment to allow women to join Lions. 

“I traveled the country promoting that we pass this amendment,” which would be put forward for a vote of the membership at its international convention in Dallas in 1986. “I was trying to get everyone convinced that it was the right thing to do. ‘Let’s bring women in, they have so much to offer.’ And the reply I got from so many clubs was ‘No, no, this is a men’s organization. I can’t be comfortable with women there. I can’t say the things I want to say.’  I knew it wasn’t going to be approved, and sure enough, it was defeated — by one-tenth of 1%,” he recalled. 

“But the incoming president, Sten Akestam from Sweden came up to me and said, ‘Jack, I know you’re disappointed. But I’m gonna put it on the ballot again next year when I’m president and I think it’s gonna pass.’ And sure enough, it did — by an overwhelming majority,” Weber said.

“How fortunate we are to have passed that legislation,” he said.  “Today, women are a big percentage of our club in Riverhead. Women have become presidents of clubs, they’ve become district governors. They become international directors.” And even international presidents. The first was Gudrun Yngvadottir, from Gardabaer, Iceland, who was elected to serve as international president for 2018-2019. Hill, the second, and LCI’s current international president, is “a very dear friend and a wonderful lady,” Weber said.

“So in my heart I know I did the right thing,” he said.

Lions are involved in a variety of activities to help their communities and people in need. Locally, the Riverhead Lions Club sponsors Little League teams, the Riverhead Police Athletic League and Riverhead CAP. The club also offers scholarships to college-bound high school seniors who have demonstrated a commitment to community service. It collects used eyeglasses, which are refurbished and sent to communities in third world countries. It pays for eye exams and eyeglasses for children in need in the local community. It also sponsors a guide dog through the Guide Dog Foundation of Smithtown each year. 

“We are there to help make the place that you live, work and play in a more fruitful experience,” Weber said.

Weber’s reputation and commitment to the cause led Doumeng to ask him to be the Riverhead club’s next president when Weber expressed an interest in transferring his membership after moving in with his daughter, Barbara Weber-Floyd and her husband Gene in Westhampton Beach, after the COVID-19 crisis ended. 

“When I asked Jack to be president,” Doumeng recalled, “he says to me ‘Are you kidding me? I’m 99 years old!’”

The person who was supposed to be the club’s next president bowed out at the last minute, he said. The Riverhead club, which once had over 100 members, had dwindled to six or seven active members, Doumeng said. It was in danger of extinction. He knew that Weber, with his Lion celebrity, organizational knowledge and management skills, could be the spark that helps move the club forward — even at age 99.

The request took Weber by surprise. “I’m coming in as a new transfer member, didn’t know a soul and they wanted me to be president? Well, I couldn’t turn them down under those conditions,” Weber said. 

“Honestly, I also thought it might get us some good publicity,” Doumeng said with a chuckle. Indeed, the Riverhead Lions Club president will be honored at the Lions district convention in Binghamton on May 4, the day before his 100th birthday, where he will be the featured speaker at a luncheon in his honor. 

Weber is certainly remarkable for his age, but don’t write him off as a curiosity. He’s ebullient and sharp as a tack, with a quick wit and an erect bearing. Nothing about his appearance or demeanor belies his age. The same can be said about his energy and lifestyle. For instance, Weber, a lifelong avid golfer, drives himself from Westhampton Beach to the Indian Island Golf Course in Riverhead. 

When it comes to Lions, Weber means business — which is obvious in the way he runs the club and its meetings. 

Weber is pleased that the efforts of Membership Chairperson Lisa Pickersgill and First Vice President Helen Lawrence have grown the club’s roster significantly. There are now more than 20 active members, he said. He said he’s working to establish organizational structures that will help the club better handle its expanding membership and function more efficiently. He has also regularly brought in guest speakers to club meetings, to talk about Lions International and the service projects being done around the world. 

Weber has also connected the club with the Brandel Murphy Youth Foundation, which provides matching grants of up to $2,000 to local clubs for service projects in their communities. The foundation was established by Past International Director Al Brandel, a longtime friend of Weber’s and Brandel’s wife Maureen Murphy, after Brandel’s term as international president in 2008-2009. The foundation’s mission is to support Lions projects that improve the lives of children in the New York State and Bermuda district. The Riverhead club has received a $1,000 matching grant to support the Church of the Harvest’s food pantry in Riverhead, doubling the club’s own contribution to help feed the community’s children in need. The local club had no knowledge of the Brandel Murphy Youth Foundation and its matching grants before he came to Riverhead, Weber said. 

The foundation is one of Weber’s favorite charities. In fact, he’s donating all proceeds from the sale of his memoir, “Jack Weber, Here!” to the Brandel Murphy Youth Foundation. 

Weber has no plans for slowing down, even after the Riverhead club elects its next president in June. First Vice President Helen Lawrence said she has not yet decided whether to move into the presidency. If need be, Doumeng said, he will step in to fill that role again. 

But Weber intends to stay active in the club, though he no longer drives at night. His daughter Nanci Hennes and granddaughter Elyse Sheehan also joined the Riverhead Lions Club and drive Weber to its Monday evening meetings.  

He also intends to continue golfing and going to Mets games with his family. 

A former die-hard fan of the New York Giants baseball team, Weber became a Mets fan when the new National League club was established in 1962 — following the departure of both New York’s National League baseball teams, the Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers. 

“The Mets even played at the Polo Grounds [formerly the Giants’ home stadium] at first, before Shea Stadium was built in Queens,” he noted.  He’s been an equally die-hard Mets fan, which, like community service, is something he instilled in his family. 

“Baseball has been a big part of his life,” Weber-Floyd said.  Lions, baseball, golf and family — “very much family” — are the four major elements of her father’s life, Weber-Floyd said  — however difficult and disappointing being a Mets fan can be. 

“I’m a very fortunate guy now to be living here with my beautiful daughter who takes such good care of me,” Weber said. “She cooks my meals. She does my laundry. She’s my chauffeur, because I can’t drive at night and around anymore. I can only do local driving, and never once has she ever said to me, ‘Oh, Dad, it’s becoming too much trouble. I can’t do this anymore,’” he said. 

“Her middle name is Ann. Barbara Ann. But I’m changing it. I’m not going to change the ‘A’ because now I’ve got to change her middle name to ‘Angel,’ Barbara Angel.  Because that’s what she is,” Weber said.

“You put that in the article,” he said, grinning.

Weber said he’s always asked about the secret to his longevity. He attributes it to two things: “good genes,” he says, and “not letting the old man in.”

“I can’t let my thinking become dominated by the aches and pains and losses of old age,” Weber explained in his memoir. That “mantra,” he said has been more of a challenge the past few years, especially while he recovered from COVID, which he contracted shortly after his 98th birthday.

“It hasn’t been easy. But if I had let it all really get me down, I would have missed out on all the joyous experiences of these last few years and if I let it get me down now, I will miss out on all the joys that I know life still has in store for me,” Weber wrote.

“So come what may, don’t let the old man in!”

Correction: This story has been amended to correct two spelling errors and the misstatement of the position held by Al Brandel, who served as an international president of the organization just prior to establishing the Brandel-Murphy Youth Foundation.