When Leslie Weening first joined the staff of the United Jewish Federation, it was located in offices over a furniture store and across the street from a poker parlor on El Cajon Boulevard, Howard Brotman recalled in a nostalgic tribute to UJF's most-tenured employee.

How far the organization has come since those days! From those offices, the Federation moved to large rented quarters on Mercury Street in Kearny Mesa and later to even larger spaces inside its own Joseph and Lenka Finci Building on Murphy Canyon Road.

It was at the current premises where, on June 17 the UJF's annual meeting featured a sentimental tribute to Weening.

Weening¹s corporate memory goes back to the time when she and Gerald Kobernick, then president of the UJF, interviewed and hired the man who has been her boss for more than two decades, Stephen Abramson, UJF's executive vice president.

Abramson and past presidents Brotman and Kobernick were among a group of nine major UJF figures who appeared in a video honoring Weening's 25th anniversary with the United Jewish Federation.

The current UJF president, Gary Jacobs, and such other past presidents as Pauline Foster, Becky Newman, Shearn Platt, Mary Ann Scher and Gloria Stone lauded Weening, who serves as executive assistant to the executive vice president.

In their tributes, the UJF officials painted a portrait of Weening that any executive assistant would envy.

"You were always the greatest and loyal supporter, the most efficient and accomplished person in the whole office," said Newman. "We knew that you were always the glue that was holding everything together."

Scher commented that she had "never, ever walked into a meeting without being thoroughly prepared and that is because of all your good work."

Stone, speaking for herself and her husband Rod, who also had served as a UJF president, complimented Weening for her "ability to see the future, to understand what people need, to be there for them, to keep secrets when you have to, to keep confidences and to perform to the highest of your ability."

At the end of the video, Abramson noted that all the comments proved what everyone at UJF already knew: "... that you really run the place, Leslie."

As part of the tribute, the UJF presented Weening with an all-expenses-paid trip to Israel in November, when she will be able to attend the General Assembly of the United Jewish Communities, the umbrella organization of Jewish Federations.

In her response, Weening noted that when she started with the Federation, she was a bride of five months and that today she and her husband, Steve, are grandparents of two.

"My daughter Lisa is about the same age now as I was when I began my tenure," she commented. When she started, "my son Seth was not a gleam in my eye...Seth literally began his entre into the San Diego Jewish community at birth, spending the first three months of his life sleeping in my office."

Reflecting on her career, she gave a special thank you "to Mark Berger, who hired me at Federation 25 years ago, and was my first boss."

The ceremony for Weening highlighted the annual meeting at which Steve Solomon and Tammy Moch disclosed that slightly more than $7.17 million for general projects and $1.1 million for specific projects had been raised by UJF during Fiscal Year 2002-2003. Andrew Viterbi reported on the successes of the Jewish Community Foundation.

Gary Jacobs was re-installed as UJF¹'s president; Steve Solomon as first vice president and campaign chair, and Eugene Berkenstadt as chairman of the Planning and Allocations Committee.

UJF presidential awards were conferred on Herb Solomon for leadership of the senior services committee, on Andrea Oster for her work in support of the demographic study expected to be made public in September, and on Robert Greenstone for upgrading UJF's Web site at www.jewishinsandiego.org.