Louis G. Werner ’76

Lou died of a heart attack May 28, 2025, at his summer home on Long Island. He was a travel writer and documentary film producer.

Born and raised in St. Louis, Lou graduated from St. Paul’s School in New Hampshire. At Princeton, he majored in history and concentrated in Near Eastern studies.

After graduation from Princeton, Lou pursued studies at the American University in Cairo and later earned graduate degrees from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Study and Columbia. His lifelong interest in Arabic language and culture sparked his career as a travel writer. He visited more than 70 countries, traveling to Mount Ararat, the Pamir Mountains, Mauritania, Khartoum, and the sub-Saharan desert. He was a writer for AramcoWorld, Scientific American, Smithsonian Magazine, and Americas Magazine. Lou produced a BBC documentary, Voice of the Whip, about a 40-day camel drive across the Sahara, following the trek of Sudanese herders. He also produced a parallel documentary, A Sheepherder’s Homecoming, about the life of a Mexican herder in the Nevada desert, now in the permanent collection of MoMA.

The class officers extend sincere condolences to his wife, Elena; children Genevieve and Kennett ’15; siblings Elise, Anne, and Peter; and extended family.