Madison men dial-up phone booth memorial to stay connected to their late brother

MADISON, Wis. (WMTV) -There’s a phone booth on the eastside of Madison that doesn’t make calls but rather serves as a quirky memorial to a man who passed away almost 10 years ago.

The Nick Weerts Memorial payphone sits outside the home at 209 Corry St. The project was headed up by Weerts’ brothers, Jonathan and Michael. The phone booth allows them to stay connected to their late brother.

“He was always into pay phones and phone booths,” said youngest brother Michael Weerts. “It was always his social media schtick, for whatever reason. He was always obsessed with the imagery and iconography of it,”

Michael says his brother Nick passed away in 2017 from fentanyl poisoning. Nick was 37-years-old.

“We were living together at the time, and I found him in his room. And it was really messed up and hard to deal with,” said Michael. “Having to tell a mother that her son had passed was really tough. It was one of the darkest moments of my life, but this project has been helping me cope for something that has been kind of hard to get through for the past 10 years,”

Oldest brother Jonathan says Nick battled addiction for years.

“(His passing) was kind of half expected, I guess. Like, it wasn’t a total shock. He had sort of been struggling with things,” said Jonathan.

The three brothers were very close growing up. Once Nick passed, Jonathan and Michael knew they wanted to find a fun and unique way to keep his memory alive.

“It was always kind of our idea to have some kind of memorial with a phone booth,” said Jonathan.

Here’s how it works. You step inside and pick up the phone. Immediately, an audio file starts playing through the earpiece. There are thousands of audio files available. Once you hang up the phone and pick it back up again, another random audio file starts playing.

“I miss his laugh and the way he makes me laugh and it’s nice to have some recorded audio of him to remind me of those times,” said Michael.

The audio features clips of Nick’s voice that comes from video tape footage. There’s also audio snippets from Nick’s favorite movies and songs.

“It’s audio from trips to Japan and trips to South Africa — which are some of my most treasured memories of my family and my brother,” said Michael. “It’s something for the neighborhood to enjoy and something us to remember him as a family,”

“You don’t know what you’re going to hear when you pick up the phone,” added Jonathan. It’s sort of comforting to know that it exists,”

The Weerts brothers admit a memorial pay phone may be a bit odd, but they believe Nick would absolutely love it.

“Nick was hilarious, very unique guy, smart, misunderstood,” said Jonathan. “He would be in the dictionary under ‘eccentric’ and I think that’s how he’d like to be remembered.

The Weerts brothers encourage you to stop by and check out the phone booth at 209 Corry St. in Madison.