Edward F. Weber, a Toledo area attorney for nearly 50 years and a one-term Republican congressman, who in 1980 swept a longtime incumbent out of office, died Monday in Hospice of Northwest of Ohio, Perrysburg Township. He was 91.
He had congestive heart failure, his son, Ford Weber, said.
Home most recently was southwest Toledo. Mr. Weber and his wife, Alice, formerly lived in the Westmoreland neighborhood of central Toledo.
He returned to practice law in 1983 after his term in Congress, rejoining Marshall & Melhorn as a senior partner. He headed its probate and trust section before his election and led the corporate-commercial section on his return.
In 1990, he formed the law firm of Weber & Sterling with Robert V. Sterling, specializing in wills, trusts, planning, and administration. He retired about 18 years ago.
Mr. Weber on Nov. 4, 1980, achieved what a dozen Republican candidates before him could not: He defeated Thomas Ludlow Ashley, ending the Democrat’s 26-year congressional career. In the presidential race, Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter. Lucas County results showed Mr. Weber had over 10,000 more votes than his party’s standard bearer.
“He was proud of the fact that he did not ride on Reagan’s coattails,” the younger Mr. Weber said.
Two years later, Marcy Kaptur defeated Mr. Weber by a margin nearly identical to that by which he was elected. Ms. Kaptur has been re-elected every two years since.
He took issue, in a Blade Readers’ Forum letter, with a report that he had admitted he could have done more to hold the 9th District seat.
“For two years while I served in Congress, I worked as hard as humanly possible to retain my seat short of compromising my principles and voting differently on the issues,“ Mr. Weber wrote to The Blade. “That loss remains the greatest personal disappointment of my life. However, I do not believe that anything I could have done differently in the 1982 campaign would have changed the outcome of that election.”
Mr. Weber’s startling defeat of the seemingly invincible Mr. Ashley was the product of a precision campaign plan effectively executed. He began planning more than two years earlier, before Mr. Ashley’s November, 1978, victory. He first got the notion to run while working in his yard. He was then a volunteer for Mr. Ashley’s Republican opponent.
“I felt that the country very badly needed a big change in its direction — away from overregulation, away from overtaxation, away from unemployment, and away from the inflationary trends, “ Mr. Weber told The Blade after his 1980 victory.
The younger Mr. Weber said: “His parents instilled in him a sense of community and civic duty.”
In the years since, he “developed a lot of respect for Marcy Kaptur,” the younger Mr. Weber said. The former congressman and his wife contributed to Ms. Kaptur’s campaigns on several occasions.
“He served with honor,” Ms. Kaptur said Wednesday. “Ed and Alice Weber had a beautiful marriage and were committed to family, to faith, to community, and country. It was a lifetime of achievement, not just for themselves, but for our community. He was a gentleman.”
As Mr. Weber returned to the practice of law, he retained his interest in the public good. He was co-chairman of a successful capital improvement levy campaign for the Toledo Zoo. He served as co-chairman of a campaign to find private funding for a museum ship on the Maumee River, what is now the S.S. Col. James M. Schoonmaker.
He tutored children in reading at a central Toledo school. He wrote the occasional letter to The Blade Readers’ Forum. By the early 2010s, he no longer considered himself a Republican, having voted for Barack Obama twice, but also said he was not a Democrat.
He and his wife joined community members in arguing for Maumee River views and green space as they publicly spoke out against ProMedica’s six-story parking garage in Promenade Park. In 2015, Mr. Weber endorsed the mayoral candidacy of another vocal opponent to the garage, Mike Ferner, a former member of Toledo City Council who was defeated in a close contest for mayor in 1993.
Edward Ford Weber was born July 26, 1931, to Elenore and Ford R. Weber and grew up on Scottwood Avenue in the Old West End. He was a 1949 graduate of Scott High School, where he played football. He received a bachelor’s degree from Denison University, where he majored in mathematics and music.
He was a 1956 graduate of Harvard law school and afterward served in the Army at Fort Belvoir, Va., assigned to the judge advocate as an attorney in the legal assistance office. He began his legal career at the firm then known as Marshall, Melhorn, Bloch & Belt.
When Craig Frederickson was hired by the firm in 1975, Mr. Weber became his mentor and managing partner.
“I was so lucky,” Mr. Frederickson said. “I have to say he was probably one of the most remarkable individuals I’ve ever known — his integrity, his ethics, his brilliance, and his ability to handle and teach a young attorney with patience. It was so impressive. His dealing with clients — he was honest and truthful. He actually cared.”
George Glasser, a retired judge of the Ohio 6th District Court of Appeals, said: “He was an individual who had the courage of his convictions and stood for integrity and everything good.”
From 1967-79, Mr. Weber taught trusts and estates at the University of Toledo law school.
He was a life member of what is now Ashland Church, from its historic home in central Toledo through its relocation more than 15 years ago to Oregon. He had been a trustee of the YMCA of Greater Toledo; the Toledo Museum of Art; the Red Cross in Toledo; the Clement O. Miniger Memorial Foundation; the Landman-Goldman Foundation, and the University of Chicago Divinity School.
He was a former district Boy Scouts chairman and was a scoutmaster for 13 years of a central Toledo troop.
Music was a favorite avocation. When he entered Denison, he took the advice of his mother — who oversaw many entertainment programs at their church — and enrolled in a course in harmony, along with prelaw studies.
After law school, he sang in the church choir and composed prayer responses and organ music. Mr. Weber, in 1977, directed a performance of a musical he composed, “One Solitary Life, “ based on the life of Jesus. He dedicated the work to his mother. He also composed the processional march for his daughter Mary’s wedding.
He played clarinet in the Maumee Community Band and played piano and trombone.
He also enjoyed hiking and backpacking out west and sailing the Great Lakes.
Surviving are his wife, the former Alice Hammerstrom, whom he married March 30, 1957; daughters Elenore Weber and Mary Due; son, Ford Weber; six grandchildren, and a great-granddaughter.
Family and friends will be greeted from noon-7 p.m. March 24 at Walker Funeral Home, Sylvania Township. Services will be private.
The family suggests tributes to the Toledo Museum of Art or the Toledo Public Schools Foundation.
First Published March 2, 2023, 5:00 a.m.
