Ronald Weber

1934 - 2024

Ronald Weber, age 89 of Valparaiso, Indiana passed away peacefully surrounded by family on March 12, 2024.

Ronald was born in Mason City, Iowa, the only child of Harley and Anne Weber. He attended St. Joseph School, graduating from its high school in 1952. He married Patricia Carroll of Mason City at St. Joseph Church in 1955. The following year he graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a major in Journalism.

He worked on newspapers in Illinois and Iowa, including a year as a reporter for the Globe Gazette in Mason City and two years as editor of the Daily Iowan at the University of Iowa. At Iowa he received an M.F.A degree in English and at the University of Minnesota a Ph.D. in American Studies.

Following two years of teaching at Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa, he joined in 1963 the faculty of Notre Dame's Department of Communications Arts, the renamed Department of Journalism. While chair of Communication Arts, he also chaired a committee to devise a new undergraduate program in American Studies at Notre Dame. After the University approved the program in 1970, it was merged with Communication Arts into a new Department of American Studies. He was chair of American Studies for its first seven years and continued teaching in the Department until retiring at the end of 1999.

In 1968-69 he was a Fulbright Lecturer in American Studies at the University of Coimbra in Portugal, a position he returned to at both Coimbra and the University of Lisbon in 1982. He received yearlong research fellowships from the National Endowment of the Humanities and from the Freedom Forum Center for Media Studies at Columbia University. In 1976 he received Notre Dame's Faculty Award.

He wrote or edited nineteen books, comprising of histories, literary studies, and novels, including a series of five fly fishing murder mysteries based in Northern Michigan. He also wrote many articles, essays, and short stories. He was quoted saying, "Writing, journalism, and newspaper work have always been the second thing I enjoy doing the most, but my first love is teaching." His love of teaching transcended the classroom to the trout streams and baseball diamonds of the Midwest. He leaves a very rich legacy that impacted many people, none more than his three grandsons who proudly carry on his passions.

He is survived by two daughters, Elizabeth (Devery) Krupchak, Valparaiso, IN, and Kathryn Weber, Wilmette, IL; his three grandsons, Christopher (Karla) Krupchak, Oak Park, IL, Colin (Nicole) Krupchak, Indianapolis, IN, Kevin (Patricia) Krupchak, Chicago, IL; and his four beloved great grandchildren Regina, Benjamin, Lucia, and Miles. He is preceded in death by Patricia Weber, his wife of sixty-three years, in 2018, and Andrea Weber, his daughter, in 2021.

With family members present, his ashes will be buried with those of his wife and daughter in Cedar Grove Cemetery at the University of Notre Dame.