reputed to be the best bridge player and crossword
puzzle worker in Clinton.
His father, Lloyd later liked to recall,
had impressed three indelible values
upon him: (1) the importance of a good education, (2)
a love of sports, and (3) an absolute revulsion at the idea of
smoking. Educated in public schools in
Clinton and later Purcell, where he lettered for
three years in football, basketball, and track, and was a member of
the debate team, he attended the former Southwestern Institute of
Technology in Weatherford, OK for two years, having been elected
president of his freshman class and a member of the debate team. He
then attended National University law school in Washington, DC for a
semester prior to entering the U.S. Military Academy in 1950. During
his plebe year at West Point, he, along with classmate John Woodyard,
won the Corps
Debate Championship and, with classmate Robert Downen,
was a semifinalist
during yearling year in the National Intercollegiate
Debate Championship
held at West Point.
Graduating in 1954 with a B.S. degree,
he was commissioned as second lieutenant of Infantry and attended
Ranger and Airborne Schools, subsequently serving at such posts as
Fort Carson, CO and Fort Ord, CA, and overseas in Germany and South
Vietnam. During these assignments, he commanded all Infantry
echelons from platoon to battalion, made 17 jumps as a paratrooper,
completed the Army’s Cold Weather Survival Course at Camp
Hale, CO, high in the Rockies, and was a leadership instructor at
the 8th Division NCO Academy in Schwabach, Germany. His last jump
was at the age of 57 with the Israeli Defense Forces south of Tel
Aviv. Between duty tours, he attended the Armed Forces Staff College
in Norfolk, VA and the Army War College at Carlisle Barracks, PA. He
also earned an M.A. degree from Harvard University in Cambridge, MA
and a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. He
served three tours on the Military Academy staff and faculty,
ascending from instructor in the Department of English to department
professor heading upper-class English to the Academy associate dean.
During his tour as associate dean and
earlier, he was involved in such far-reaching initiatives as the
computerization of the academic departments, acquisition of the land
and buildings of closed Ladycliff College in Highland Falls,
revision of the Honor System in the wake of the EE301 honor scandal,
and conversion of the old Bachelor Officer Quarters to an academic
hall housing the departments of English and Social
Sciences. During his Vietnam
War tour in 1964–65, he served initially as a
military advisor in Tay Ninh Province (receiving the Combat
Infantryman Badge and later the Bronze Star for valor in an action
on the edge of the Boi Loi Woods), as plans advisor at III Corps
headquarters in Bien Hoa, as briefing officer in the Combat
Operations Center at the U.S. Military Assistance Command
Headquarters in Saigon, and finally as senior aide-de-camp to
General William C. Westmoreland ’36,commander of all U.S. forces in
Vietnam.
Lloyd retired from the Army as a colonel
in 1984 and received the Army
Distinguished Service Medal. He worked as a civilian
project manager in Saudi
Arabia and Turkey, following which he resumed his
former long-time position as
editor of
