One Year Later, Remembering Jon Lieb

By Michael Gold

Pleasantville lost Jon Lieb about one year ago and I’m still wondering why it happened.

I met Jon about 30 years ago. We worked together at a public relations agency in Manhattan in the 1990s, when he and I were assigned to promote the anniversary of a chemical company based in Connecticut.

It was either the 50^th or 75^th anniversary of the company’s founding. The company made something called surfactants. You don’t know what surfactants are? Neither did we. (They’re used in shampoo.)

Our team struggled to come up with a decent idea to celebrate the founding of a company that was simultaneously very impressed with itself and yet pretty close to invisible to most of the chemical industry.

When Jon and I met to discuss what we could do, we inevitably fell to shaking our heads at the conundrum of trying to make news out of a company that could have been part of a plot of a “Seinfeld” episode, the show famous for being about nothing.

Before the anniversary hit, I obtained a communications job with a software company in White Plains and lost touch with Jon.

Our family moved to Westchester several years ago. Walking through the aisles of the local Shop-Rite, I saw Jon with his wife, pushing a cart. We exchanged phone numbers, and unlike, many similar situations, we actually caught up with each other.

That’s when we really became friends. He and I would meet for coffee occasionally, and lunch at the local diner.

Jon and I often sat at this coffee bar, at a table on the sidewalk out front, and talked about our children, the high school, where our kids might go to college, sports, politics, and on occasion, public relations, and business.

We talked a lot about The New York Mets, both of us perennially hopeful that the team would start doing better one of these years, perhaps misguided in our optimism.  We had similar conversations about the Jets, but with far more despair woven into those discussions.

Our meetings were frequently interrupted by people walking on the street, who said hello to Jon and stopped for a brief exchange of personal news. He seemed to know everybody in town. I started to think of him as the unofficial mayor of Pleasantville.

He had played first base for his high school baseball team and was in two local softball leagues. Jon told me about the Pleasantville team he founded in the 2000s, the Moonlight Grahams, named for the old New York Giants player who had the distinction of appearing in exactly one game in the majors, in 1905. He played right field for one inning and never got to bat.

Graham attained a small measure of glory by being featured in a minor role in the film, “Field of Dreams.” The team’s name was a playful indication that the Moonlight Grahams had a sense of humor about themselves.

They weren’t into any funny business on the field, though. The Grahams were a really good team. They possessed a collective drive to win. They hustled.

Jon loved the game. He looked to be at least six foot two inches tall, and he had a good solid swing at the plate.

He recounted for me several battles for the championship over the years, with the team from Foley’s Club Lounge. Foley’s won the title four times from 2018 to 2023, with the Grahams always contending closely. He told me the Moonlight Grahams had won the championship in 2016 but had been shut out since. He was frustrated at coming so close, but never winning.

So, the Moonlight Grahams went out and won the championship after Jon died.

Jon was very proud of his two sons, Jaden, and Nathan, who were pitchers for Pleasantville High School. His older son was going off to Franklin and Marshall and he was slated to play baseball for the college team. Jon was also proud of his wife, Sarah. She had a serene, quietly warm presence.

He had the moxie to start his own public relations firm and it seemed the company was doing well.

When I found out about him dying, I was stunned. We had eaten a diner lunch together a few months before and texted about meeting again soon.

I didn’t understand why he felt that he couldn’t reach out to somebody to talk about what was going on in his life, what was gnawing at him so intensely, to push him to commit suicide. I’m still mad about it.

When I walk by the coffee bar, I often imagine him sitting there, his long legs stretched out under the table, talking to somebody who stopped to say hello.

He had a great, big flash of a smile and the heart to go along with it.

Michael Gold has had articles published in the New York Daily News, the Albany Times Union, the Hartford Courant and other newspapers, and The Hardy Society Journal, a British literary publication.