Frank Thomas

Weber Notable Sports Figures
Chronology
1929 Born in Indianapolis, Indiana, on December 23
1948 Marries Juanita Delk on December 23
1948 Bowls in first ABC tournament
1955 Joins Budweiser bowling team
1958 Helps establish PBA as one of 33 charter members
1969-70 Serves as PBA president
1981 Joins PBA Senior Tour
1995 Announces plan to cut back on tournament play
2002 Bowls in 55th ABC tournament
Juanita Delk on December 23, his birthday. The couple
has four children, Richard Jr., Paula Kae, Carl John, and
Peter David.
In the mid-1950s, Weber left his postal job and Indianapolis
behind when he received an offer to join the
famed Budweiser bowling team of St. Louis. Also playing
for the St. Louis bowling team were future Hall of
Famers Don Carter, Ray Bluth, Pat Patterson, Tom Hennessey,
and Bill Lillard. “I had a beat-up car and not
much more, but it was a great opportunity,” Weber told
Chuck Pezzano of the Bergen Record.
One of the biggest factors in propelling professional
bowling into the spotlight in the second half of the 20th
century was the formation in 1958 of the Professional
Bowlers Association, in which Weber played a key role.
However, the unlikely central figure in the establishment
of the PBA was a lawyer/television personality named
Eddie Elias. In the 1950s, while working his way
through law school, Elias hosted a television talk show
at WAKR.
Bowlers’ Low Pay Outrages Elias
It was an interview with Dick Weber and some other
leading bowlers of the day that planted the seed that
eventually grew into the PBA. During the course of the
interview, Weber years later told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
the conversation got around to compensation.
“Eddie wondered how much we got paid. We told him,
and he was outraged and said we should be getting
more. He asked us what we would think about a professional
bowling association.”
Not long thereafter, thirty-three of the leading
bowlers of the 1950s met with Elias to discuss the idea
at a motel in Mountainside, New Jersey, after the American
Bowling Congress Masters Tournament. “He said
he needed 50 bucks from each of us before we started
talking,” Weber recalled. “He told us he would make
money first and we would make money second. He
started getting tournament sponsorships and the purses
went from $2,000 to $2,500 and from there it blossomed
to what we have today. Everything he said, he
did, and it worked.” And thus the PBA was born. Elias
served as the fledgling organization’s legal counsel and
1732
Awards and Accomplishments
1959 First PBA tournament win
1961, 1963, Named Bowler of the Year by the Bowling Writers Association
1965 of America (BWAA)
1965 PBA Player of the Year Award
1970 Inducted into ABC Hall of Fame
1975 Inducted into PBA Hall of Fame
2001 Hired to do color commentary for TV coverage of AMF
Bowling World Cup
2002 Named one of 20 best bowlers of the 20th century by Bowling
Magazine
2002 Won PBA Senior Tour tournament to become first bowler to
win a PBA title in six different decades
worked diligently to promote the sport during the
PBA’s early years. With the help of television coverage
and larger purses, Elias managed to bring bowling into
the mainstream. In 1959, the nineteen-year-old Weber,
one of the PBA’s thirty-three charter members, won the
last two of the three tournaments on the inaugural PBA
Tour. He went on to win eight of the PBA’s first twentyone
tournaments.
Helps Popularize Bowling
Weber is perhaps as well known for his efforts to
popularize bowling as for his bowling expertise itself.
Weber used television to tell millions of Americans
about the joys of bowling and to legitimize bowling as
a sport. He was there when ABC-TV first began televising
the PBA Tour in the early 1960s and has outlived
that relationship to become a frequent guest on
David Letterman’s late-night talk show. Over the years
Weber has helped to promote bowling as an owner of a
bowling center, a charter member and president of the
PBA, TV announcer and analyst, and inventor and
salesman for dozens of bowling products. Further cementing
Weber’s reputation as one of bowling’s best
ambassadors have been his frequent tours around the
United States and abroad to conduct bowling clinics
and exhibitions. In the mid-1990s he conducted such a
tour of South Korea.
With the advent of nationwide televised coverage of
professional bowling, Weber’s fame as a bowler grew
rapidly. He dominated the bowling scene in the first half
of the 1960s and was named Bowler of the Year by the
Bowling Writers’ Association of America (BWAA) in
1961, 1963, and 1965. Because Weber’s best years on
the PBA Tour came relatively early in the history of professional
bowling, his career earnings of just under $1
million on the PBA Tour are dwarfed by the leading
bowlers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. But
Weber was among the best of his era, and he still hasn’t
lost his touch, as he proved in January 2002 when he
won another tournament on the PBA Senior Tour. For
his career as a whole, Weber has won four All-Star titles,