Manhattan defense attorney Marian Seltzer always gets her husband’s voicemail. But she doesn’t mind leaving messages – he’s been dead for three years.
When he passed away from pancreatic cancer, John Jacobs, also a defense attorney, was buried with his fully charged Motorola T720 phone. His $55 Verizon bill gets paid every month and his cell number is even etched into his gravestone under the words “Rest in Peace.”
The first call to Ja cobs in the great be yond occurred at his funeral, when son Simon, 19, phoned while startled mourn ers gawked at the ringing coffin at Cedar Park Cemetery in Paramus, NJ.
“The poor grave diggers,” recalls Selt zer, laughing. “I thought they’d have a heart attack.”
Jacobs was known to call those closest to him three or four times a day. “He called me every half-hour,” said his son Sammy, a 22-year-old senior at Indi ana Univer sity who came up with the idea to bury dad with his cell.
Seltzer added the gravestone touch. “I didn’t want to do the whole beloved husband thing or the religious thing,” explained Seltzer. “I wanted to keep it away from the cliched. And I thought this was pretty unusual – so did the engraver.”
Last week, Seltzer dialed the number and listened to her husband’s outgoing message: “Hi. You’ve reached the voicemail of John Jacobs. After you hear the beep, leave a voicemail and I will return your call.”
She launched into one of her monthly messages. “Hopefully the Knicks will do better this year. Hopefully they’ll finally have a winning season. Sammy passed all his finals. It’s cold outside today. I hope it’s not cold down there,” she told him.
Said the Upper East Sider, “Some people talk to God; I talk to my deceased husband.”
Seltzer has never checked the voice messages because she doesn’t have the PIN. And besides, she says, “I wouldn’t feel right doing it. It’s a private thing.”
The sons often call with the latest sports news.
“Dad, the Giants won the Super Bowl!” Sammy exclaimed in a phone message after the big game in February. “I wish we could have gone. You always wanted to go.”
Simon, nervous before his final lacrosse game, phoned his father to say, “It’s my last game of the season. I’m going to try my hardest and try to get a hat trick.”
Seltzer says she has no plans to turn off her husband’s cell service.
“As long as someone is still out there who cares, I still care. My kids still care. His friends still care,” she says. “I don’t think I’ll ever shut it off.”
scahalan@nypost.com