Early years Loeb was born on December 26, 1905, in
Washington, D.C., the son of Catharine/Katherine Wilhelmina (Dorr) and
William Loeb Jr. (1866–1937). His parents were both of German descent. His father was executive secretary to
Theodore Roosevelt, and a nationally known figure in his own day. Loeb's paternal grandfather, also named William Loeb, was a German immigrant. Loeb's siblings were Louisa Loeb-Neudorf, Amelia Olive Loeb and Lillian May Loeb. The younger Loeb attended the
Hotchkiss School and
Williams College, and soon met and married Elizabeth Nagy, a faculty member at nearby
Smith College. They were married on May 29, 1926. Nagy was eight years older than Loeb, and his parents objected to the matrimony. Loeb's father excluded him from his will in light of the marriage. Mrs. Loeb, infuriated at her son's mistreatment of Eleanore McAllister, excluded him from her will and sued him for the $1 million in funding he had obtained from her to finance his acquisitions of the
Union Leader in 1946 and 1949. Loeb continued to see Nackey. In 1949, he fired the print staff at his Vermont newspapers when they attempted to unionize. Nackey was initially placed in charge of printing, but the couple left Vermont in 1952 in the wake of his mother's lawsuit.
1952–1966 Loeb and Nackey Gallowhur moved to
Reno, Nevada, where Loeb sued for divorce from Eleanore McAllister and then married Nackey. In 1957, Loeb attempted to launch a paper in nearby
Haverhill, the
Haverhill Journal, but the publication proved to be a drain on the staff and presses shared with his other newspapers. Her will acknowledged Loeb's siblings, ex-wife Eleanore McAllister, and his daughter Katharine Penelope, but left him nothing. He filed suit, beginning a five-year legal battle that lasted through 1973 and rose to the
Vermont Supreme Court, claiming that he had reconciled with his mother and that she had promised him 75 percent of her estate. He settled for less than 10 percent, after her estate had been drained of the bulk of its funds through his legal maneuvering. Loeb also published an editorial previously issued by
Newsweek that portrayed Muskie's wife,
Jane, in an unfavorable light. Muskie's subsequent emotional defense of himself and his wife in front of the newspaper's offices in Manchester was seen as a sign of weakness and instability. Muskie later claimed that there were not tears in his eyes, as many papers reported, but rather melting snow, as it had been snowing during his speech. Loeb's journalism résumé was the subject of skepticism in 1974, when he claimed in a front-page editorial to have worked for the Hearst conglomerate, as a reporter for the
New York World for eight years before buying his St. Albans paper. The
Hearst Corporation denied he had ever been employed there, and the
World had actually ceased operations eight years before Loeb said he had started work there.
Toledo Blade chairman Paul Block Jr. also denied ever seeing Loeb on the assignments he claimed to have worked. Loeb was instrumental in the victory of
Meldrim Thomson Jr., in the next gubernatorial election, and remained a political ally of Thomson's until Loeb's death. In December 1977, Loeb was driving with his wife outside of
Reno, Nevada, when the card skidded of the road due to ice and flipped over; Nackey Loeb suffered spinal damage and was paralyzed from the waist down. Loeb died of cancer in September 1981 at the
Lahey Clinic in
Burlington, Massachusetts. He left control of the
Union Leader to his wife. She remained as publisher until stepping down in May 1999; she died in January 2000. Control of the newspaper then fell to Bernard McQuaid's son, Joseph McQuaid. ==Legacy==