W1PCD is off the air.

That call sign does not belong to a radio or television station, but to an amateur radio operator named Danville S. Webber, who died at age 75 on Thursday at a Bangor hospital.

Webber had the name recognition that would make anyone in radio or television broadcasting envious. The name Webber is plastered on heating fuel trucks that travel the snow-lined streets throughout Maine and it’s painted larger than the size of a billboard on fuel storage tanks situated along the Penobscot River.

To many people in the area, Webber was known for being president and treasurer of Webber Oil Co., a family company founded by his father, Alburney E. “Allie” Webber, in 1935. Danville, known as “Danny,” left the company in 1984.

To a handful of people in town, though, Webber was “poor country doctor” – that was the best way for them to remember his Federal Communications Commission-licensed call sign, W-1-Poor-Country-Doctor.

“That’s what we’d call him,” said Roger Dole, former president of the Pine State Amateur Radio Club. “I’m Tiny Kitchen Sink and my wife’s Poor Roger’s Boss.”

Unlike broadcasters, Webber’s audience was a small but friendly group that liked talking to each other, especially about their amateur radio equipment.

“His knowledge and his willingness to help, well, he was down-to- earth,” Dole said.

For an hour or so on Saturday mornings, the amateur airwaves would be silent. Webber, Dole and other club members would leave their ham shacks – rooms in their homes where their amateur radios were set up – and actually meet face to face at one of three area restaurants.

“We’d have breakfast every Saturday morning and he’d order off the menu,” Dole said. “I was aware of the fact that he was connected to Webber Oil but he never flaunted it.”

Yet the sheer size of Webber’s amateur radio antennas towering in his backyard on Linden Street was something to be admired. Club members would drive by his house just to look at them and gawk.

They were precious to him, said niece Grace Treworgy. But she said what was even more remarkable was that even though the antennas were enormously tall, they didn’t overpower the beauty of his backyard.

“For a house in the city, it is the prettiest,” she said.

Webber, at times, would stay up all night to participate in ham radio contests, Treworgy said. Hamsters – as the users sometimes call themselves – would flood the airwaves and attempt to reach as many other amateur radio operators in other countries as they could during a specified time. They’d sit in their ham shack repeating their call sign – “W1PCD, W1PCD, W1PCD, do you read?” – over and over again until someone else acknowledged them.

Webber’s niece said Webber had been having heart problems for about a year, and recently fluid was collecting in his lungs. His heart was struggling to keep it out.

“He simply said he couldn’t breath … he went as easy as that,” Treworgy recalled with a sigh.

Webber’s love for amateur radios began before his career at his father’s business, when he was a Merchant Marine in World War II. Besides Pine Tree, he was a member of the Quarter Century Wireless Association and the American Radio Relay League.

His other passions were boating, and at one time he owned a small plane that he flew around the country.

“He was a vital guy,” Treworgy said. “He liked a lot of things.”

Webber was married to the late Annette Carlisle, and they had three daughters, Diane Cahill of North Carolina, and Sally Shaw and Grace Harris, both of Florida.

Webber was a graduate of the Higgins Classical Institute, attended Maine Technical School and graduated from Embry Riddle School of Aviation of Florida. In Bangor, Webber was a member of Rising Virtue Lodge No. 10 AF&AM, the York Rite and Scottish Rite Bodies Valley, and Anah Shriners.

But, according to his family, the “most precious” donation he ever made was to give Grace Methodist Church the organ that Annette used to play.

A funeral service will be conducted at noon Tuesday at Brookings-Smith Funeral Home in Bangor.

Tuesdays, said Dole, also happened to be the day that Webber and other club members would make a point of signing on to the airwaves just to check in with each other.