Jules Timerman, 82, a food co-op visionary

WEAVERS WAY Food Co-op is more than just a place in Mount Airy to buy food at reasonable prices. It's a community meeting place, where people of a vast variety of ethnicities, income levels, occupations and political philosophies can prowl the aisles in happy consort.

As a writer put it some years ago, "The co-op is a neighborhood bodega, a gathering place, a work site, an inspiration."

And the man behind Weavers Way was a visionary who wanted to make a place where wholesome food could be provided in a cooperative environment in which all the members would have a stake and have to put their shoulders to the wheel by working six hours a year.

Jules Timerman may not have imagined that what he started back in the early '70s would change a neighborhood, would, in fact, become a focus of a neighborhood that actually encouraged people to move there.

Although Jules Timerman and Weavers Way parted company a few years after it was founded, the enterprise carries on with much of Jules' dream intact.

Jules, who carried that same philosophy to his later enterprise, Food With TLC, in Erdenheim - a "semi-natural food store," as he called it - died April 3 after a long illness. He was 82 and lived in Mount Airy.

A statement on the Weavers Way Web site reads: "It is important to remember that our co-op was started by one man: Jules Timerman. Weavers Way, Mount Airy, the city and the world owe a debt of gratitude to Jules, and he will be greatly missed."

Jules, born to Russian immigrant parents, worked as a computer programmer for Honeywell and the Insurance Company of North America after graduating from Drexel University.

Becoming disenchanted with the corporate world, he left to put his ideas of alternative-food purchasing to work. He started out selling winesap apples from his Carpenter Lane porch.

From there, he opened a small co-op in the basement of Summit Church, 6757 Greene St. Jules used his children, Andrea and Alex, to go through the neighborhood to tell residents that their father was creating a new way to get fresh food.

The neighborhood responded, and the co-op moved to the former Sidney's Deli on Carpenter Lane.

In 1973, Jules bought the co-op's current home at 559 Carpenter Lane, at Greene Street, for $5,000. The rest, as they say, is history.

Jules poured not only his ideas for food marketing into the new business, but his hard work as well.

"He was a prodigious worker," said former Weavers Way president Bob Noble. "He clocked 70 to 80 hours a week with no salary during the co-op's infancy."

In 1974, Jules hired Norman Weiss, now Weavers Way's purchasing manager.

"I would listen to Jules explain what he wanted to suppliers and I'd think, 'This guy has a gift,' " Weiss said. "His combination of clarity, matter-of-factness, and the appeal of his goal - and commitment to it - proved irresistible."

In an interview at Food With TLC, 631 Bethlehem Pike, in Erdenheim, Jules told an Inquirer reporter of his passion for the business:

"I like it, all of it, even the dumb lifting. There's a lot of satisfaction in being able to say, I pay the rent, I don't owe anybody anything, I kept my values intact.

"I'm 64 and a half years old and, OK, I'm tired at night, but I'm still capable of working my ass off."

He referred to TLC as the "inconvenience store - the inconvenience store that saves you money."

Jules was always committed to the environment and supported such organizations as the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay, the Wilderness Society and the Delaware River Keeper Network.

He is survived by his wife of 50 years, the former Kit Fletcher; his son, Alex Timerman; his daughter, Andrea Dominic; and a grandson.

Services: A private service was held by the family. Donations may be made to Link-TV (www.linktv.org/contribute). *