By DONALD WITTKOWSKI
Mark Lloyd had never heard of Leo F. Weber up until a few weeks ago. Now, he feels he has come to know Weber extraordinarily well.
Lloyd was able to learn intimate details of Weber’s life – and death – from musty documents discovered inside a hidden compartment in an old cedar chest left outside a Sea Isle City home.
The documents traced pivotal moments of Weber’s life from his time as a Philadelphia high school student to his military service during World War II to his death in combat in northern Africa in 1944 when he was just 19 years old.
There was also something else. Among Weber’s personal effects was a Purple Heart engraved with his name on the back. The Purple Heart is a high military decoration awarded to those wounded or killed in combat.
Lloyd has now made it his personal mission to return the Purple Heart to Weber’s relatives so that they will have such a cherished family artifact symbolizing the bravery and valor of a man who made the ultimate sacrifice in war.
“We’re going to find them,” Lloyd said of Weber’s relatives.
As someone who also served in the U.S. military and is a Purple Heart recipient, Lloyd felt a personal connection to Weber. Lloyd is a Vietnam veteran and commander of Sea Isle City’s VFW Post 1963.
Lloyd’s unorthodox introduction of sorts to Leo F. Weber began in May when Lloyd was handed a trash bag containing old papers and other personal items belonging to Weber.
The documents were given to Lloyd by a local resident, because some of them were of a military nature. It was thought that Lloyd, as the VFW commander, might be able to identify the military papers and know what to do with them.
The artifacts and papers were found in the secret compartment of an old cedar chest that had been thrown out in front of a house on the 7500 block of Pleasure Avenue in Sea Isle.
With some sleuthing, Lloyd later discovered that Leo Weber’s sister, Anna May Weber, and her husband, Joseph Harford, had once lived on the 7500 block of Pleasure Avenue. The couple is now deceased.
Lloyd is convinced that no one was intentionally trying to discard Weber’s documents and artifacts. On the contrary, he believes that since they were tucked away in a secret compartment in the cedar chest, whoever placed them there made a concerted effort to protect and save them.
“So, not only were they not thrown in the trash intentionally, they were secured in a hidden compartment to protect them. Unfortunately, everybody involved had died prior to telling someone to preserve the trunk as there were important items hidden in it,” Lloyd said.
After he was given the trash bag, Lloyd had no idea what it contained. He took it to his Sea Isle home and placed it in his garage. A few days later, he noticed a moth ball-like odor and realized it was coming from the trash bag. It was at that time that he began to examine what was inside.
He pulled out an old document. Carefully unfolding it, Lloyd saw that it was Leo Weber’s birth certificate from Dec. 4, 1924, at Howard Hospital in Philadelphia.
Lloyd also discovered that Weber’s mother was Mary Moran and his father was also named Leo Weber. He had five siblings, including a sister, Anna May Weber, the same Anna May Weber who would later have a home on the 7500 block of Pleasure Avenue in Sea Isle. When Leo Weber was born, the family lived at 124 Daly Street in Philadelphia.
As he grew up, Leo Weber would attend Our Lady of Mt. Carmel grade school and Southeast Catholic High School, graduating in 1942. Among the artifacts that Lloyd found in the trash bag was an old black and white photo of Leo’s high school sweetheart, signed, “To Leo, August 1943, Theresa.” It was a love affair tragically cut short by war.
After the war broke out, Leo wanted to join the military as a member of an air crew. Lloyd discovered in the documents that Leo was too young at that time to be an air crew member. But Leo persisted, forging his father’s signature on a parental consent form to get him into the air service. He entered the military in 1943. He held the rank of private.
As he dug deeper and deeper into the trash bag, it dawned on Lloyd that what he was reading was Leo Weber’s life story – unfolding page by page, document by document. What started off feeling like an invasion of privacy was rapidly turning into a friendship, Lloyd recalled.
“I said, ‘Patti, I’ve got this man’s whole life on my work bench.’ I just felt that I really got to know this guy,” Lloyd said of what he told his wife, Patti.
At one point, Lloyd pulled out a box from the trash bag containing Weber’s Purple Heart. After sorting through some pictures and papers, Lloyd found an envelope. Feeling uneasy about the envelope’s contents, Lloyd began to pace.
But he felt compelled to open it. Inside, he saw a letter addressed to Leo Weber’s mother informing her that her son had been killed in action on Feb. 19, 1944, in northern Africa and that his remains were buried in a cemetery in Nettuno, Italy.
Lloyd read the letter out loud while speaking about Leo Weber during remarks at Sea Isle’s Memorial Day ceremony on May 29.
“It was the letter that no mother ever wants to receive about her son at war,” Lloyd told the audience members attending the Memorial Day ceremony.
Lloyd held up Weber’s Purple Heart during the ceremony. He also showed a photo of the cemetery in Italy where Weber was buried.
“This is a picture of war,” Lloyd said, his voice rising as he addressed the audience. “This is a picture of the price of freedom. Leo is why we are here today – Leo and the thousands of brave men and women before him and after him that have given their very lives so that we could gather here today on this paradise of an island we call home. Leo never made it home.”
During his remarks, Lloyd vowed that he would find some surviving member of Leo Weber’s family so that the Purple Heart could be returned to them.
Since then, Lloyd was able to read the obituary for Anna May Weber, Leo Weber’s sister who died in 2015 and formerly lived in Sea Isle. The obituary mentioned that Anna May Weber was survived by two nieces.
Lloyd is trying to contact one of the nieces about Leo Weber’s Purple Heart. At last word, he was waiting for a reply.
Now, nearly 80 years after Leo F. Weber was killed during World War II, Lloyd would like to know one more thing about the man whose life story unfolded in the old documents discovered in a secret compartment of a cedar chest.
“It just makes me wonder what impact Leo’s death had on that family,” he said.
