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lan Weber moved to Iola from Lincoln, Neb., in 1967, when he was 14. His parents owned the motel on North State Street. As a teen, Weber worked at the motel, cleaning the pool, attending to the laundry, gathering up the great tangled hunks of sheets and towels. After high school, he enrolled at Allen County Community College, one of the first classes to gather at the new campus. He then went on to Kansas University. From there, to KU Law.
In 1977, Weber returned to Allen County, to Humboldt this time, where he entered into practice with John White, a former district court judge. Within a couple of years, he was practicing on his own. He fell in love with a woman he met in court one day, a fellow attorney named Nanette Kemmerly. In time, they married and, eventually, the pair had a child, a daughter, Katie.
In 1998, Nanette was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. By the time of her first treatment, the disease had already found her brain. Doctors removed the tumor in her brain and removed a part of her lung and she lived for another eight years. “Seven of those were good,” remembers Weber, “the last one, not so much.” She served Allen County as its attorney for two decades.
Weber remained in private practice in Humboldt for 15 years, after which he was invited to become the county counselor for Allen County, first on a retainer basis and full time starting in 2005.
A few years ago, sensing that his narrow frame was carrying too much flesh, Weber started walking during his lunch hour. Inside the two-story courthouse, he would make a circuit. Up the steps, down the hall; down the steps, down the hall; up the steps …
On nice days, weather-permitting days, he’d do his laps outside, around the courthouse square. Three laps usually, about a mile. A couple of years ago, a fitness class, mostly women, began walking the square during the noon hour, too. Not wanting to disturb Weber, they would travel opposite the county counselor, the parties exchanging waves as they crossed paths.
After a couple of years of this, Weber had shed 35 pounds. He had improved his diet, too, and he began working out with a set of light dumbbells at home in Humboldt.
ONE evening late last October, when Weber’s attention was again turned toward his dumbbells, he paused to rest. He crossed his arms over his chest and felt, below the shallow tissue on his chest’s left side, a lump. “Frankly, it was as big as a walnut,” recalls Weber. “I’d never noticed it. It gave me no pain, no tingling, no visible sign whatsoever.”
Weber notified his primary care physician, who immediately set the counselor up for a mammogram, and an ultrasound, and connected him with a surgeon.
A biopsy on the tumor and surrounding lymph nodes conducted at the start of December came back positive for breast cancer.
Two weeks later Weber underwent a full mastectomy, deleting all of the breast tissue on his left side and most of the lymph nodes, too.
Weber is now halfway through his chemotherapy. His caramel-colored hair, with its studious part, is long gone, his eyebrows too. “Initially it was a shock,” laughed Weber, clasping a hand over his egg-smooth head. “Every time I’d walk by a reflected surface, I’d jump back — is that me?”
Currently, half of Weber’s infusions are administered at Allen County Regional Hospital and half at a hospital in Emporia. Weber’s 88-year-old father drives his son to appointments in Emporia.
Both of Weber’s parents are nearing 90, both still in good health. They took Weber into their home in the days immediately following his surgery. “They’ve been a great help,” says Weber.
