Individual Details

Obituary

Washington Post, The (DC) - September 20, 1989
Deceased Name: POST AD EXECUTIVE LOUIS LIMBER DIES
Louis G. Limber, 61, a senior advertising executive at The Washington Post who was credited with playing an important role in the newspaper's growth, died of cancer yesterday at his home in Potomac.
Mr. Limber, a native Washingtonian, began his newspaper career in 1958 as an advertising sales representive with the old Washington Daily News. He joined The Post three years later. He served successively as advertising sales representative for automotive and retail furniture, assistant retail manager, classified advertising manager, advertising manager and, finally, senior advertising manager.
Colleagues attributed his success in part to a profound knowledge of the Washington business community and in part to hard work. When the permanent Washington community, as distinct from the Washington of politics and world affairs, was still a relatively small city, Mr. Limber knew almost everyone in the retail trade, and he had known many of them since boyhood.
When The Post was struggling to gain ascendancy over the old Washington Star, he turned these contacts to his advantage as an advertising salesman. Moreover, he had a prodigious memory -- he never forgot a name or a face -- and enormous enthusiasm for his work. He soon made his mark.
"In the development of The Washington Post, Lou Limber has been a giant figure," Donald E. Graham, the publisher, said yesterday. "He was a truly beloved man, and one of the finest salespeople ever to work for a newspaper."
In 1987, Mr. Limber was one of three Post employees to win the Eugene Meyer Award, which is given annually for career contributions to the paper. Katharine Graham, the chairman of The Washington Post Co., described him at that time as being of the "fight, fight, sell, sell school of sales."
A former president and director of the Advertising Club of Metropolitan Washington, Mr. Limber won its highest honors -- the Crystal Prism Award in 1985 and the Silver Medal in 1989 -- for contributions to the local industry.
Apart from his family and his work, Mr. Limber's particular interests included his Greek heritage (his parents were born in Greece and he spoke Greek with his family), his church (he was an associate board member of the St. Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral) and the Washington Redskins.
Indeed, he was an athlete himself. A broad-shouldered, stocky man, he was captain of the football and baseball teams at Roosevelt High School in Washington, and he was named to the All High Football Team in 1944. In 1947, he played baseball in the old Washington Senators farm system.
At Marshall College, where he graduated in 1951 with a degree in journalism, he was managing editor of The Parthenon, the school newspaper. From 1951 to 1954, he served in the Army and was stationed in Austria. From 1955 to 1958, when he joined the Washington Daily News, he worked for the Reliable Furniture Stores in Washington. For part of the time that he sold furniture he studied law at George Washington University.
Mr. Limber was a director of the Southern Classified Ad Managers Association and a former member of the action committee of the Association of Newspaper Classified Advertising Managers. He was a national judge of several advertising competitions, including those of the U.S. Treasury Savings Bonds and the American Trucking Association campaigns.
He was a member of the Greater Washington Board of Trade and a director of the D.C. Crippled Children's Foundation and the Metropolitan Police Boys & Girls Clubs. He was a former commander of the American Legion's Adelphi Post No. 38 and co-chairman of the United Way Campaign at The Washington Post. He was a member of the American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association.
Survivors include his wife, Xanthippe (Peppie) Limber of Potomac; four children, Kalliope Gaganis of North Potomac, Charles Louis Limber of Potomac, George Louis Limber of Gaithersburg and Katherine Smyth of Herndon; his mother, Kalliope Limber of Washington; and three grandchildren.
Copyright (c) 1989 The Washington Post