One year has passed since St. Charles resident John Spira disappeared from his West Chicago business.

It was a year of harrowing firsts for his family, who watched as birthdays and holidays passed by without him. Weeks turned into months and investigators are still no closer to finding out what happened to Spira the night he disappeared, Feb. 23, 2007.

“(The past year), without a doubt, was the strangest, most surreal, worst year of our lives and I can’t believe it’s already been a year,” Spira’s brother, Tom, said. “In my whole life, I’ve never gone a whole year without seeing my brother. His birthday was tough, the holidays were tough, but the hardest part was still not knowing.”

Best of the blues

On Saturday, Spira’s friends and family marked the one-year anniversary of his disappearance with a party at Chicago’s renowned blues venue, Kingston Mines.

Friends and family took the same stage on which Spira once played the blues and recounted the 45 years they shared with the accomplished guitarist. They laughed and cried together as they told tales of Spira’s quirky sense of humor, mechanical genius and childhood antics.

“That’s how John would’ve wanted it,” Spira’s sister Stephanie McNeil said. “He would’ve liked it to be happy and celebratory.”

For the most part, it was happy. As Spira’s friends and family swapped stories against the backdrop of a CD he released with his band, the Rabble Rousers, they found a momentary reprieve from the constant agony of not knowing what happened to their loved one.

Complete disappearance

Spira was last seen at about 7 p.m. the night he disappeared, at Universal Cable Construction, the business he started more than a decade ago in unincorporated West Chicago. Around that time he called a friend to confirm their 8:30 p.m. dinner in Oak Brook.

Spira never arrived to the dinner, nor did he make it to a gig the next night with his band.

McNeil said her brother, the band’s lead guitarist, went by the name “Chicago Johnny” and hadn’t missed a gig in nearly 30 years.

Spira’s truck was still parked at his business and his cell phone continued to ping off three nearby towers for three hours after his last contact with his friend.

Spira and his estranged wife had just agreed on the final terms of their divorce settlement the morning of Feb. 23, McNeil said. At 5:30 a.m. Feb. 25, his wife filed a missing persons report with the St. Charles Police Department.

By that time, snow had completely covered the ground and foot searches turned up no trace of Spira.

After months of dead-end leads, the case rapidly cooled. Then Spira’s business mysteriously went up in flames in September. While investigating the fire, McNeil learned someone had also dismantled and completely removed a large missing person billboard friends had hung up across the street from the business just days before the fire. Another sign was put up following the blaze, and it too was mysteriously taken down.

McNeil and her brother, Tom Spira, held out hope that the fire would reignite interest in their brother’s disappearance. But arson investigators still don’t know what caused the fire or who took removed the signs.

“I’m really frustrated,” McNeil said. “I feel like it’s slipped through the cracks. I feel like it’s just sitting there.”

Frigid leads

St. Charles police spokesman Paul McCurtain and Cmdr. Mark Edwalds, with the DuPage County Sheriff’s Office, said the case is still open but there have been few leads to follow, especially as months have passed.

“We’ve worked all the leads we’ve gotten and we’re still working on some. So far, none of the leads point to any particular theory or reason for his disappearance, whether it be on his own accord or at the hands of someone else,” Edwalds said. “Sometimes you just get the ones that just totally frustrate you, like this one.”

With no evidence of foul play at Spira’s home or business, the investigation is still being treated as a missing person’s case and not a homicide. But McNeil said she knows her brother would not just abandon his life and family.

“He’s a very gregarious, outgoing, friendly person,” McNeil said after a December search. “I don’t know anybody who doesn’t like him.”

Strength in sorrow

While the December search did not produce any leads, it did introduce Spira’s family to a group of allies who have proven to be invaluable in McNeil’s fight to keep her brother’s case in the media.

Since that December search, McNeil has teamed up with the families of missing persons Lisa Stebic, Scott Arcaro, Bradley Olsen and Stacy Peterson.

“We’ve kind of joined forces with families of other missing people to kind of group together and support each other,” said Kerry Simmons, step-sister of Stacy Peterson, at Spira’s party. “(We’re working) together to take advantage of the media and making sure the faces of the loved ones stay out there.”

Simmons was joined by Melanie Greenberg and Don Zimmerman, cousins of Stebic, a missing Plainfield woman whose case held the media spotlight for months.

“It’s not right that missing men should not get the same attention as young, attractive women,” Greenberg said. “The circumstances around John’s disappearance are just as mysterious and strange and have just as many twists and turns as Lisa’s story and Stacy’s story.”

Since the unlikely group formed, Tom Spira and McNeil said the other families’ support has made a noticeable difference in the media coverage of their brother.

“Relatively speaking, John has gotten more media attention than any other missing man besides like Jimmy Hoffa, people who are already famous,” McNeil said.

The media coverage of Spira’s case could also be attributed to McNeil’s tenacity in organizing searches, setting up media events and checking in on the investigation. Described as “a pitbull in lipstick,” by her husband, McNeil, a lawyer from Phoenix, said she won’t stop until she finds answers.

“I’m not going to give up. I’m not going to let up,” McNeil said. “I’m still going to do whatever I can do to figure this out because I can’t stop.”