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Obituary

She built a business that had an international reach

By MARTY CLEAR
Published March 2, 2007

SUNSET PARK - In the 1940s, a young widow with a 2-year-old son faced, at best, an uncertain future.

It wasn't easy for Louise Dibbs to build a new life after her first husband died when she was 26. But she not only survived, she prospered, and became one of Tampa's leading businesswomen, building a company that eventually had international operations.

Mrs. Dibbs passed away Monday (Feb. 26, 2007 ) at age 90, after battling cancer for several years.

Along with her second husband, Joseph Dibbs, she founded and ran Dibbs Aluminum Products. In the 1950s and 1960s, the company was one of the leading manufacturers of jalousie windows.

"If you see jalousie windows in Florida or the Caribbean, they probably came from Dibbs Aluminum products," said her son, David Dibbs.

She worked hard in life and didn't let age slow her down. She took an active role in developing her real estate holdings, including Dibbs Plaza in Carrollwood, even when she was in her late 80s.

"She always had a positive attitude," her son said. "She'd always say, 'Okay, you have a problem here, but we can work through it.' She had a way of sitting back and looking at the big picture and then knowing what needed to be done."

She was raised in Connecticut and attended college in Rhode Island. She returned to her hometown and married William Millea not long after she graduated.

Their son David was 2 when Millea died of a brain tumor in 1943.

"Because of the war it was easy for a woman to find work," her son said. "She worked in clerical positions and waited tables at night. After the men came home, it got tougher."

She found a postwar job working in the burgeoning nuclear industry in Oak Ridge, Tenn. She left her young son with her parents so she could try to make a living.

"She only stayed there a few months because she hated it," David Dibbs said. "She said everyone was from out of town. They were away from their families and they lived fast and loose, and that just wasn't her."

After leaving Oak Ridge, she drove by herself to Florida for a vacation, a bold move for a woman in that era.

"A woman in the 1940s didn't leave her son and go to Florida," David Dibbs said. "It just wasn't done. She came down here in January and discovered that people actually live here, and the sun was shining."

She brought her son to Miami and took a job selling ads for a local newspaper. One of her clients was a grocer named Dibbs.

"She was engaged to someone else at the time, but Joe Dibbs was persistent," her son said.

A few years later, her new husband got a distributorship for a garage door company and moved the family to Tampa.

They settled in Sunset Park and had another son, Stephen; Joseph Dibbs adopted David.

One of the garage door customers asked Dibbs if he could do windows. Dibbs had no expertise in windows, but he accepted the job and then figured out how to do it.

Jalousie windows were trendy in Florida at the time, so the Dibbses expanded their window operation, opening offices on Platt Street and later a plant on Adamo Drive. They later sold their business and opened a smaller operation, Dibbs Products, on Hillsborough Avenue. Her husband passed away about 10 years ago.

In addition to her business work, Mrs. Dibbs was a 50-year member of the Tampa Women's Club, of which she was a past president and a longtime board member.

In later years, she was instrumental in the founding of St. Mark's Episcopal Church.

She donated land to the church in her early days and continued to be actively involved until recent years. "The pastor said he would never make an important decision about the church without checking with her to make sure she said it was okay," her son said.

[Last modified March 1, 2007, 07:40:47]