{"id":37621,"date":"2025-11-12T21:38:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T21:38:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/37621\/"},"modified":"2025-11-12T21:38:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T21:38:07","slug":"fresh-meadows-sidney-weber-prepares-for-landmark-100th-birthday-qns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/37621\/","title":{"rendered":"Fresh Meadows\u2019 Sidney Weber prepares for landmark 100th birthday \u2013 QNS"},"content":{"rendered":"

Long-time Fresh Meadows<\/a> resident Sidney Weber is preparing for a major milestone as he gets ready to celebrate his 100th birthday on Sunday, Nov. 23.<\/p>\n

Weber grew up on Division Avenue in Williamsburg before moving to Fresh Meadows, where he purchased a home for $19,500 in 1952.\n<\/p>\n

Growing up, he had studied at a traditional yeshiva and began helping out at his father\u2019s business by around the age of 12, joining his father Julius as he delivered kosher sodas to religious families across the city as part of the Good Health Seltzer company.<\/p>\n

Julius, who founded the company, operated five routes across the city as well as a bottling plant on the Lower East Side.\u00a0His father had also made deliveries to several Prohibition-era speakeasies throughout the city before Weber came on board.<\/p>\n

\"SidneySidney Weber and his father Julius on a soda deliver route. Photo courtesy of Jamie Weber.<\/p>\n

Weber still remembers traveling on delivery routes throughout the city in a horse and buggy before Julius purchased his first truck for around $850 in 1939.<\/p>\n

His father later began selling some of the five delivery routes to immigrant delivery drivers, who took up the mantle of delivering sodas packed in traditional seltzer bottles to religious households throughout the city.<\/p>\n

Weber eventually branched out on his own route in his father\u2019s company, beginning a 40-year career of delivering specialty soda to homes in Brooklyn and Queens.
\n\"SidneySidney Weber holds a traditional seltzer bottle at his home in Fresh Meadows. Photo by Shane O\u2019Brien.\n<\/p>\n

His son Richard, who sometimes accompanied his father on the routes, remembers lugging heavy crates of soda up five-floor walk-ups along the routes. He also remembers arriving at pickup points in Greenpoint or Williamsburg in order to start a workday at 4 a.m.<\/p>\n

Driving delivery routes for 40 years, Weber has naturally seen drastic change throughout the city, none more so than in his native Williamsburg, which has transformed from a working-class neighborhood into a middle-class area full of luxury buildings in recent years.<\/p>\n

\u201cI should have bought real estate there,\u201d Weber said wistfully.\n<\/p>\n

At the age of 22, shortly after branching out on his own, Weber met the love of his life Marion in Upstate New York. Marion had been due to meet Weber\u2019s cousin but ended up meeting the soon-to-be centurion instead.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou snooze, you lose,\u201d his granddaughter Jamie said.\n<\/p>\n

The couple moved to Fresh Meadows<\/a> shortly afterward and started a family, welcoming three sons, six grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren over the years.<\/p>\n

Family remains central in Weber\u2019s life as he approaches his landmark birthday, with Weber stating that he looks forward to visits from each and everyone of his clan.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI live for the family,\u201d Weber said. \u201cThat\u2019s what keeps me going. That\u2019s my whole life.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

He retired from the soda delivery business in 1988 long after the business model had gone flat and subsequently spent around ten years selling used cars before eventually retiring for good. He insists that he made more money in those ten years than in his 40-plus years delivering soda.<\/p>\n

\"SidneySidney Weber on a soda delivery route. Photo courtesy of Jamie Weber.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t a smart business,\u201d his son Richard said of the soda delivery business. \u201cBut it was a big one.\u201d<\/p>\n

But despite retiring almost three decades ago, Weber has kept active.\n<\/p>\n

In his retirement, he joined the Ford Model A Club of America, proudly driving a Ford Model A from 1930 for a number of years before selling the car around two years ago. The car, which is five years younger than him, had no power steering and required users to double-clutch in order to function.<\/p>\n

An avid car enthusiast, Weber also taught all of his grandchildren how to drive, a practice he continued until he was about 90 years of age, despite the fears of his daughter-in-law Donna.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cYou were 90 years old when you taught Jamie how to drive, I should be a little nervous,\u201d Donna told her father-in-law at his home in Fresh Meadows.\n<\/p>\n

Weber still lives at his Fresh Meadows home to this day and remains active in a number of local organizations.\n<\/p>\n

He visits his local senior center twice a week to go dancing and remains an active member of the fraternal organization the Knights of Pythias<\/a>, where he regularly plays cards with other members.<\/p>\n

\u201cThank God I\u2019m in pretty good shape,\u201d Weber said. \u201cI can\u2019t complain for the age,\u201d he added, jokingly insisting that he still feels like an 89-year-old.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI never needed a hearing aid. My head\u2019s working, thank God for that,\u201d he continued. \u201cAnother ten years like this, I\u2019ll be happy.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

He believes the secret to a long and healthy life is to have as few worries as possible, adding that he strives to be as carefree as possible \u2013 except when it comes to family.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t worry about a thing,\u201d he advised. \u201cBut you always worry about family.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Weber has reached a century in such good health in spite of a former habit of smoking 10 cigars a day, which he persisted with for 30 years until warned by his doctor that it would have a detrimental impact on his health.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy throat started to bleed,\u201d he said. \u201cThe doctor said, \u2018if you don\u2019t stop smoking, you\u2019re going to die,\u2019 so I stopped smoking.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

He has maintained his sweet tooth, however, frequently enjoying an apple pie every week.\n<\/p>\n

He also remains an avid wrestling and baseball fan and looks forward to cheering on the Mets next year as they look to improve on a disappointing 2025 season that saw them miss out on the MLB post-season.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, however, Weber and his family look forward to celebrating a huge milestone on Nov. 23.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know how many people have that opportunity (to celebrate a family member\u2019s 100th birthday),\u201d his son Richard said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Long-time Fresh Meadows resident Sidney Weber is preparing for a major milestone as he gets ready to celebrate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37622,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[22017,22018,10342,22019,9,24,63,122,124,123,22020,22021],"class_list":{"0":"post-37621","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-queens","8":"tag-100th-birthday","9":"tag-ford-model-a-club","10":"tag-fresh-meadows","11":"tag-knights-of-pythias","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-city","14":"tag-nyc","15":"tag-queens","16":"tag-queens-headlines","17":"tag-queens-news","18":"tag-sidney-weber","19":"tag-soda-delivery"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}