P’ville Mourns Beloved Resident’s Passing, Celebrates Legacy

It seemed everyone who came into contact with Jonathan Lieb loved to be around him, the source of positive energy and optimism.

Wherever he might be in and around his home community of Pleasantville, and anywhere else for that matter, he made others feel better just by being present.

His wife, Sarah, recalled that on their third date after meeting in December 1999, she knew she was going to marry Jonathan. A year later they were engaged.

“Six months on we were so comfortable, we felt like exciting and passionate, we were friends, we felt like family right from the beginning,” Sarah Lieb said. “He was such a great guy to be around – dependable in what he was, a consistent, great person.”

After initially living in the city, they moved to Pleasantville about 15 years ago, raising their two sons, Jaden and Nathan, currently a senior and freshman, respectively, at Pleasantville High School.

Lieb, who established his own public relations and marketing firm, Thirty Ink Media & Marketing, coached youth sports with gusto. His life revolved largely around family, community and sports. He died on June 2 when he was hit by a southbound Metro-North train near the Valhalla station.

His death was determined to be a suicide. He was 53 years old.

In the days since his passing, friends and family have been left to wonder what happened and how someone who cared so deeply about others wouldn’t reach out for help.

Many referred to Jonathan as one of their best friends.

“Jon was so great at making everyone feel welcome and heard and as though they were #1 in his life at any given time, that when it came time for needing others to support him, he just didn’t know how to ask for it or accept it,” said Chad Kraus, a fellow Pleasantville resident who was a longtime friend and a teammate on their local softball team the Moonlight Grahams. “He was still too busy thinking about everyone else.”

Paul Dispenza, who lives around the corner from the Liebs and whose family became close friends with Jonathan’s family because their children were in the same grades, said even if he didn’t know someone well, he would look for ways to help, assisting others with their resumes, or in one instance, writing a recommendation for a friend who was being considered for his college’s sports Hall of Fame.

Dispenza remembered that if one of the kids he coached or a teammate had a bad game, Jonathan always had words of encouragement.

“He was always positive,” Dispenza said. “He never got too high or too low. We’re Mets and Jets fans, both he and I, and if you know anything about the Mets and Jets, it a long history of (being) mostly down. But he was always positive. He was always like ‘Hey, this could happen, this could happen, don’t count them out.’”

Jonathan was born in Brooklyn on July 30, 1969, but spent nearly all of his childhood in Long Island once his family moved there, Sarah said. She said he was best friends with his father, Howard, and was close with his younger sister, Fredi.

He often looked forward to visiting his boyhood neighborhood and Sarah’s parents in Vermont. In addition to family, friends and sports, Jonathan loved to write, having started his career as a reporter at a Long Island newspaper before moving on to public relations.

He often wrote letters to the editor, and he convinced the New York Post to publish a letter in December 2000 – his marriage proposal to Sarah.

“He was all about friends and nostalgia and history,” Sarah said.

Another softball friend, Eric Holtz, who helped his oldest son with baseball training to help him play collegiate ball, called Jonathan “the epitome of a mensch.”

“The top three happiest guys I ever met in my life,” Holtz said. “That’s why it came as big a shock as it did for everybody.”

The past week-and-a-half has been difficult to process for those who knew Jonathan. Dispenza said since his death he thinks about his friend all the time.

“I feel a little bit cheated, like I was looking forward to the future, the boys playing in high school and our relationship as families,” Dispenza said. “We expected it to go on a lot longer.”

Sarah said she has been grateful for the outpouring of love from the community, which has given her and her family the strength needed to manage. Before dawn Sunday morning, Sarah, her family and friends attended Break the Hold’s annual Into the Light Walk, to help bring awareness about how to prevent suicide.

However, she doesn’t want Jonathan’s memory to be about how he died. She wants him to be remembered for how he lived.

“It happened very rapidly, and it didn’t have anything to do with who Jon Lieb was,” Sarah said. “He was wonderful, unbelievable, a real special human being.”

Lieb’s funeral was held at Temple Beth El of Northern Westchester in Chappaqua on June 5. Burial followed at Sharon Gardens in Valhalla.

The public can make a donation to Break the Hold in Jonathan’s memory at www.bthbreakthehold.org.