Thoughts in the wake of revelations about the newspaper’s late publisher, William Loeb

When this writer started to be interested in New Hampshire politics in the 1960s, and for 30 or so years thereafter, the dominant press source in our state was the Manchester Union Leader, now known as the NH Union Leader. The vicious pen of its publisher, William Loeb, often dominated public discourse, influenced political decisions, affected the outcome of elections, and was a source of negativism and deterrent to progress in the state.

For years, Loeb’s attacks on moderate Republicans, especially, were personal and reprehensible. Many, such as Republican Gov. Walter Peterson, Warren Rudman, legislative leaders, and especially candidates in the New Hampshire presidential primary in both parties and opposed by Loeb, received personal attacks, as did members of their families, like Peterson’s daughter Meg, then a student at Plymouth State College, and the wife of then-Maine Senator Edmund Muskie.

When Loeb was attacked, he responded in kind, with more ink and the last word.

Author Kevin Cash, who wrote an expose entitled, “Who the Hell is William Loeb?” received blast after blast, as well as a lawsuit for defamation. Former New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner, then president of the UNH Class of 1970, was excoriated for his graduation address praising free speech on campus, giving Loeb a chance to attack the university, one of his favorite targets, along with Gardner.

This writer, giving the UNH commencement address at its winter commencement in 1974, took Loeb to task and was rewarded with a frontpage editorial entitled “Cook’s Christmas Hate-In” which compared me to “Hitler’s brown-shirted youth goons.” That saga got attention in the Cash book.

Loeb perpetuated the idea that Manchester could not accomplish anything as a city, and the state was unable to develop with proper revenue sources. He created candidates in his own likeness and often discarded them if they strayed from his orbit.

After all this conditioning, imagine the shock many New Hampshire citizens with memories long enough to remember the state pre-1981 felt, on Sunday, May 1, when they awoke to the following headline in Loeb’s own paper, “An Icon’s Sordid Secret. Stepdaughter: Loeb sexually molested me as a young child. Former publisher’s own daughter told three people he also abused her.”

The story reported that after almost 70 years of silence, Nackey Gallowhur Scagliotti, Loeb’s stepdaughter, revealed that Loeb had sexually molested her for over a year in 1953, at their home in Reno, Nev. She recounted in detail how he came into her room, with details not necessary to repeat here. She also recounted that a decade later, Loeb molested his own daughter, the late Edie Tomasko, when she was 6 years old.

In a front-page editorial, now-publisher Brendan McQuaid, son of longtime editor and publisher Joseph McQuaid and grandson of B.J. McQuaid, founder of the New Hampshire Sunday News, addressed the paper’s readers: “For three and a half decades, Loeb wielded the printing press as a political weapon, castigating some of the most powerful names in the country while praising some of the most controversial … He publicly espoused a certain morality and ethics while failing to live his own life by the same. Loeb’s many divorces, adulteries and family squabbles have become well known. Until now, very few knew of more terrible and unforgivable things hidden in his past … The actions described here were as wrong 70 years ago as they are today … The only accountability we can provide is to history — a history that now has a fuller picture of the man Loeb was. William Loeb has nothing to do with the current New Hampshire Union Leader, but he has much to do with its history. Loeb famously said, ‘I don’t care what people think of me, just so long as they think.’ We are certainly thinking now.”

This exorcism of the hypocritical Loeb from the pages of the papers he owned and misused — his name was removed from the paper’s masthead and “from other commemorations” — whether timely or late, was startling as were the revelations. They also entitle all those excoriated by Loeb or critical of him during his life to say, without pride, “We told you so.”

Brad Cook is a Manchester attorney. The views expressed in this column are his own. He can be reached at bradfordcook01@gmail.com.