Alexander S. Pope Jr., 81, a longtime Washington funeral director who also owned a limousine service that supplied cars for state funerals, died April 18 of cancer at his home Silver Spring.

Mr. Pope, a Washington native, grew up working in the funeral home founded by his father in Southeast Washington in 1920. After taking over the business in 1956 when his father died, Mr. Pope gradually expanded the company, Pope Funeral Homes, to include two locations in Maryland. His company is among the largest and oldest locally owned mortuary firms in the Washington area.

Seeing a need for hearses and limousines at funerals, Mr. Pope launched a side business in the 1950s when he bought a used LaSalle limousine and rented it to other funeral homes.

The company, Limousine Service Associates, grew into a prominent transportation firm and had many high-profile clients in the 1960s and 1970s, including President John F. Kennedy, Marjorie Merriweather Post, Frank Sinatra, Howard Hughes, the Jackson Five and other prominent figures in politics, entertainment and business. Mr. Pope's company was the transportation coordinator for the funerals of President Kennedy in 1963 and his brother New York Sen. Robert F. Kennedy in 1968.

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Mr. Pope closed the limousine company in the late 1970s to concentrate on his core business of mortuary services.

Alexander Snead Pope Jr. was born in the District and attended Browne Junior High School and Dunbar High School, graduating in the class of 1942.

During the 1938 Boy Scout Jamboree in Washington, the 13-year-old Mr. Pope served as a guide at the White House, where he met President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In his youth, he worked at his father's funeral home and also managed a fleet of 16 newspaper delivery boys. In the early days of World War II, he was an air warden in Anacostia and supervised a brigade of bicycle messengers.

Mr. Pope attended Howard University before serving in the Army Air Forces during World War II. After his discharge in 1946, he attended Eckels College of Mortuary Science in Philadelphia and became a licensed funeral director. At the beginning of his mortuary career, Mr. Pope briefly held jobs as a scientific illustrator with the Navy and Commerce Departments.

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After the death of his father, Mr. Pope took over management of the business and worked with his mother, who did the bookkeeping. In 1971, he moved the business from its original location on 15th Street SE to Pennsylvania Avenue SE. He opened a branch in Forestville in 1992 and expanded to Silver Spring in 1997.

A one-time architecture student at Howard, Mr. Pope designed the Pennsylvania Avenue and Forestville buildings himself. The company is now managed by his son, Alexander S. Pope III.

Mr. Pope was a member of many professional organizations, as well as of the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Washington.

He had also been a Cub Scout den leader.

In the 1970s, Mr. Pope became model-railroading enthusiast on a grand scale. He built a train layout designed after the Pennsylvania Railroad of the 1950s and '60s that eventually took up 2,000 square feet of the house in Temple Hills where he lived for more than 30 years. It was one of the largest train layouts in the region and drew hundreds of visitors to his home for model-railroading shows.

Mr. Pope enjoyed traveling across the country by rail with his wife, and he was also fond of playing slot machines.

His wife of 38 years, Sandra Quillen Pope, died in 2002.

In addition to his son, of Bowie, survivors include three other children, Julia A. Douglass of Germantown, Lydia M. Pope of San Diego and John S. Pope of Odenton; and four grandchildren.

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