The Front-Page Fulminator

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Loeb inconsistently practiced what he published. He was ardently militaristic, yet he strenuously, and successfully, avoided military service in World War II. He once condemned Nelson Rockefeller as a "wife swapper" for divorcing his wife and marrying a divorcee—precisely what the twice-divorced Loeb himself did in 1952, when he shed his second wife to wed Nackey Scripps, granddaughter of Newspaper Tycoon E.W. Scripps. He advocated that a publisher should have only one newspaper, yet for years he owned and controlled four. He became a major force in New Hampshire politics, hand-picking Senators and Governors. Yet he phoned in his editorials from a 30-room mansion in Prides Crossing, Mass., 50 miles from Manchester, and claimed Nevada as his legal residence to avoid paying Massachusetts income taxes.

Loeb's tangled finances were a source of damaging ammunition for his critics. He borrowed $2 million from the Teamsters' Central States Pension Fund in 1965, and thereafter became a vociferous defender of jailed Teamster President Jimmy Hoffa. In 1979 he vowed that he would place 75% of his newspaper stock in trust for his employees. But in his will, control of the paper goes to Nackey, now 56, and after her death to a nine-member board of trustees.

Loeb seldom let accuracy stand in the way of his prejudices. The masthead of the Union Leader featured the axiom of Daniel Webster: "Nothing is so powerful as truth." Loeb typically failed to inform his readers that the quotation was taken out of context. "There is nothing so powerful as truth," said Webster, "and often nothing so strange.''