WEBSTER, DAVID JEFFREY

A memorial service will be held at the Hoboken Historical Museum, 1301 Hudson St., on Saturday, Oct. 3, at 2 p.m. for David Jeffrey Webster, 64, the Collections Manager at the Hoboken Historical Museum. He died suddenly on July 4. David began working at the museum in 1999, when he created the first professional system to manage its growing collections. Eventually he took on a larger role in exhibit design and fabrication. Most of the exhibits for the past decade have been due to David’s hard work and creative touch, although he shied away from any public acknowledgement of his enormous contributions.
He continually urged the museum to embrace new technologies, acquiring and cataloguing artifacts, curating and fabricating exhibits. He felt strongly that the artifacts should be available to everyone and created the searchable online collections catalogue on the museum’s website.
David was born in Hartford, Conn., and attended the University of Connecticut for two years, a scenic design major. He was an avid reader with a passionate curiosity and largely self-taught. Not one to talk about himself, David seldom mentioned his careers before the museum. One as a prop master/set decorator for 100+ productions on Broadway, off-Broadway and at regional theatres including Hartford Stage, Milwaukee Rep, Harvard University, and Williamstown. His experience in New York included two years as prop shop foreman at the New York Shakespeare Festival plus shows at Circle-in-the-Square.
He was a book conservator at the Special Collections, Milbank Memorial Library, Teachers College, Columbia University.
His primary responsibility was for the care and physical treatment of the 20,000-volume rare book collection and manuscript archive.
David, with his wife, Claire, was proprietor of Lukacs & Webster, Booksellers, Hoboken, a mail-order business selling out-of-print and rare books that also offered book conservation services, custom bookbinding, and box making.
David also worked at Props For Today, a New York City prop rental company where he was the manager overseeing showroom floor assistants, shipping/receiving, and facilities planning including a 400,000 item bar-coded inventory control system.
The family requests that, in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the David Webster Memorial Fund at the Hoboken Historical Museum to aid in his most recent endeavor: the generation of more funds and, especially, space for collections management and storage. Donations can be made online. Please see the link on the Museum’s website: hobokenmuseum.org.
He is survived by his wife of 26 years, Claire Eve Lukacs of Hoboken. His first wife, Sarah Barbara Watstein currently residing in North Carolina, also survives him.
He will be greatly missed by everyone who knew him.
Services arranged by the Introcaso-Angelo Funeral Home, Hoboken.