Brandon Dill
Bob Loeb
I was the third of the nine children born to Bill and Mimi Loeb. She was an Irish Catholic; he was a Jew of German descent. In 1936, my dad caught polio, at age 13, and lost the use of his legs. His own father died a few years later.
Dad didn’t get along with a lot of people, including his only sibling, older brother Henry Loeb, who became mayor of Memphis in 1960 and would go on to become one of the most controversial figures in Memphis history.
Before that, the two brothers had gone to work at the laundry business that their grandfather founded, making it a third-generation family business. But Henry and Bill Loeb went separate ways. Henry got into politics, and Dad ran the Loeb laundry and barbecue businesses.
My own parents were socially progressive, and taught us not to discriminate by race, gender, religion or creed. Dad was sympathetic to the racial justice movement of the 1960s and had African-American business partners — owners of Loeb’s Bar-B-Q franchises — when very few white businessmen in Memphis had such contacts. When she wasn’t caring for her nine children, my mother Mimi, a graduate of Memphis College of Art, was very active in the local arts community, as well as a pioneer of health and fitness in the Memphis area.
I was 13 in 1968, when Dad’s businesses were firebombed and boycotted in the civil unrest that followed Dr. King’s assassination, largely on account of how people confused Bill Loeb with his brother Henry, the mayor. Within five years the Loeb businesses were insolvent, and within 10 years most were closed. Dad went into the convenience store business. He had 9 kids to raise.
I went to college in Dallas and planned to stay there. The economy there was a lot more vibrant, and there were a lot of opportunities. But I always missed my hometown, and ultimately chose Memphis, and went to work with Dad and my brother Lou, making ours the fourth generation in a family business. By then, Dad’s stores were not profitable, so we morphed again, this time into a real estate company. Frankly, we have accomplished relatively little since the founding of our company 131 years ago, but thankfully, we’ve done well enough to stay employed.
Today, our real estate business is non-traditional. It is as much art as commerce, which I know would make Mom proud. For the most part we buy older buildings and fix them up. To be sustainable our work must be profitable. We choose projects that other commercial real estate companies won’t touch. We collaborate with others who share our passion about Memphis, building places where people want to be, showing off authentic Memphis culture. In our business, this is called “placemaking.”
My wife and I have five children in our merged family. Our three adult children live out of town. We plan to work the rest of our lives making Memphis a better place, a place where our children might want to come and raise their own families. Should any of them choose to work with me, they would be the fifth generation in a family business. Maybe they will focus on commerce over art.
I’m often humored by the whim of the decision process. I look at my life and career and choices, and laugh, wondering why. If we only knew the future, it would be so much easier to make decisions. Begin with the end in mind? Sure.
Memphis and Memphians have suffered in many ways since 1968. I thank God for our successes. We have a long way to go; we are human and always will. We hope to make good decisions.
I believe that the human spirit is regenerative. God made us that way, in His image. We will never get over the trauma of 1968, but we must get through it. Together. I love this city and its people, blemishes and all. They inspire me to get out of bed in the morning.
Like my father, I am sometimes confused with others who share the Loeb family name. I imagine most people can relate to similar situations with members of their own family trees. I can’t right my relatives’ wrongs. I just play the hand that was dealt to me, making the best choices I can. I choose to be in Memphis, and I’m grateful to be a Memphian. And I believe that the best is yet to come, for all of us.
Bob Loeb is president of Loeb Properties, a real-estate development company that has been responsible for the redevelopment of Overton Square and the Highland Strip.
