Robert K. Straus; Executive, Publisher

Robert K. Straus, 91, New Deal executive and publisher of trade magazines. A scion of New York’s R.H. Macy family, Straus was born in Manhattan and majored in government and economics at Harvard University. Straus worked for Franklin D. Roosevelt during his terms as New York governor and president, and helped run the New Deal’s National Recovery Administration. During World War II, Straus was a government affairs specialist at the Allied forces headquarters in England. A veteran magazine publishing executive, Straus moved his family to San Francisco in 1958 and founded Sun Litho, which he headed until it was sold in 1980. The firm, which began by publishing small newspapers in California, was one of the first commercial printing companies to use phototypesetting and web offset printing to produce catalogs and other business materials. He and his wife, Barbara, established the Thinking and Learning Center to promote the teaching of semantics at Pace University. On Monday in Santa Barbara.