About Ron.
It’s impossible to define a person. To contain them. To distill a life of ups and downs, loves and losses to a page on some website pleading for help. It reduces a person down to a summary, which is incomplete at best. So we’re not going to summarize Ronald Weber. That’s unfair, especially because we know moments define us. Here’s one:
When Ron is in his late 20s, an exhausted resident at Hannemon Medical School, he and Shelley decide to take a rare vacation the day after Ron’s finals (Ron’s on zero sleep from the night before). School is hard, money is tight, but even after a handful of years of being married, they still feel like newlyweds. They charter a flight to the Caribbean, giddy to get out of Philadelphia for the weekend. Imagine them in the plane, looking out over the water, halfway through a cocktail before remembering they hate alcohol.
They touch down at Hato International Airport, the only place to land on Curacao. They check in, drop their bags, and hurry to the hotel’s casino, eager to order another drink they won’t finish. And it’s there, across the floor in that same casino, where a stranger loses consciousness.
“Are you a doctor?” A man from Ron’s plane takes a chance (or maybe typecasts).
“Yes.” Ron says, probably in amazing 1970s swim trunks.
He kneels down on the carpet, and starts mouth-to-mouth on an elderly man also from Philadelphia, also on vacation. The old man’s wife looks on, pale. Shelley is stunned.
Ron does CPR on his knees for 45 minutes until the ambulance shows up. It’s grueling, and while Ron is close to passing out himself, he keeps at it, knowing that even a short lapse in treatment would mean certain death for a life on the brink.
The ambulance arrives, a stretcher rolls out… but can’t elevate, meaning Ron has to continue CPR while side-stepping on his knees across the casino floor to the van. Somewhere along the way, the man vomits into Ron’s mouth — a bad sign. But Ron pushes on, he’s not about to give up now.
He and Shelley ride together with the man and his panicked wife, all the way to the hospital, CPR the entire way. When they arrive, the emergency doctors on-call assess the situation: the man is too far gone, they tell him, there’s nothing they can do.
Ron, still on zero sleep, stays up all night, consoling the sudden widow with Shelley by his side. They and another couple from the hotel sort out how to get the man’s body back to Philadelphia to be buried — an arduous task that involves petitioning the governor of the Island.
… And that, friends of the Internet, was Ron’s vacation after finals. We shouldn’t need to surround this story in cliches about who Ron Weber is. About his values, his sacrifice, his compassion, his bravery. That is self-evident.
This is one moment in an ongoing series of moments that define Ron. And on this page, if you keep scrolling, you’ll find a growing collection of moments from Ron’s life — keyholes to look at a person who has lived through seven decades and contains multitudes. Read in order, poke around randomly, or better yet, ADD A MOMENT that you shared with Ron and we’ll post it here.