Col. (ret.) Elwood Alon Lloyd

Colonel Elwood Alon Lloyd, US Army Chemical Corps, Retired, died February 14, 2014 at age 85 of Hodgkin's Lymphoma at the family home in Canton, Connecticut. A native of Knoxville, Tennessee, he worked as a TVA Stream Sanitation Technician before graduating from the University of Tennessee in 1949 with a B.S. in Chemistry and a commission as a Second Lieutenant US Army Reserve (receiving the National Defense Medal). Employed in the Biology Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory K-25 studying the effect of radiation on enzymes until November 1951, he volunteered for active duty during the Korean War. He was assigned to Fort McClellan, Alabama as Commanding Officer of the 365th Chemical Maintenance Company for Exercise Longhorn maneuvers in Texas for which he received the US Army Commendation Medal. He then also served as an instructor in the Chemical Corps School at Ft. McClellan in 1952. He married Wynn Leach on May 10, 1952. Their daughter Jeanne was born in 1953. In 1955 (February 18, 1955 - June 10, 1955) they lived in a trailer near the Nevada Test Site where Alon was Radiation Exposure Control Officer for personnel participating in Operation Teapot. They moved to France in 1956 where he developed and implemented the Army's first radiological defense program. He was integrated into the Regular Army in 1957, receiving a second National Defense Medal. After attending the Chemical Officer's Advanced Course at Fort McClellan in 1959, he returned to the University of Tennessee, graduating in 1961 with a M.S. in Nuclear Chemistry. He was then assigned as Chief, Chemistry Division and then Deputy Commander, US Army Nuclear Defense Laboratory, Edgewood Arsenal, Maryland. Ordered to Vietnam in 1963, the assassination of President Kennedy caused his diversion to The Presidio of San Francisco as Nuclear Effects Engineer, Headquarters Sixth Army. He again organized, trained and tested teams for nuclear weapons accidents and radiological defense in the western United States and for a major maneuver with nuclear weapons in the Mojave Desert, receiving the US Army Meritorious Service Medal. Assigned from1965-1966 as Special Weapons and Chemical Officer of the Seventh Infantry Division in Korea (Republic of Korea Presidential Unit Citation Medal), he instigated action that resulted in the removal of nuclear weapons from Korea, receiving a second US Army Commendation Medal. After attending the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in 1967, he was assigned as Deputy Commander, US Army Biological Warfare Center and Fort Detrick, Maryland, where he worked with the leaders of Frederick, Maryland and made housing available to military personnel regardless of their race, receiving the US Army Legion of Merit Medal. In 1969 he was assigned to the Pentagon in Arlington, VA, as Executive Officer, and a member of the General Staff, of the US Army Advanced Ballistic Missile Defense Agency. Reassigned as Chief, Plans Division, and then Deputy Director, Site Defense and Terminal Systems Office of the Safeguard Ballistic Missile Defense Program, he conceived and developed a modular construction and equipment installation plan to permit the rapid deployment of an effective nationwide ballistic missile defense system, receiving a second Legion of Merit Medal. (See CCSU Veteran's History Project for a 2012 video interview of Col. Lloyd's military career.) In 1971, he was elected, ordained and installed as a Ruling Elder in the Kirkwood Presbyterian Church of Springfield, VA, according to the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church in the United States. "Those who fill this office should be blameless in life and sound in the faith, men of wisdom and discretion. By the holiness of their walk and conversation they should be examples of Christian faith." -- Book of Church Order, 11-3. Retiring from the U.S. Army as a Colonel on December 31, 1975, he and his wife, Wynn, resided in Springfield, VA for the next two decades. In 1975 he was employed by TRW as a Senior Staff Engineer to develop a compendium of the US Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA) program for converting coal into oil. In 1977 he transferred to ERDA as manager of a coal-to-synthetic fuel conversion project. When ERDA was converted into the US Department of Energy, he was promoted to Director, Major Project Management, Fossil Energy, responsible for the design and construction of six major synthetic oil-from-coal plants by six different contractors using six different technologies. Promoted again, he was made a Charter Member of the US Senior Executive Service. In 1984 he accepted a position as Vice President of Hydrocarbon Research Inc. and held several consulting positions before retiring permanently in 1995, to move with his wife to Canton, CT, to live near their daughter and her family. Survivors include: his daughter and son-in-law, The Rev. Jeanne Lloyd and Robert Hard of Canton, CT; grandson, Brenton Lloyd Hard of Astoria, NY; sister, Jeanne Holt of Rome, GA; sister-in-law, Eloise Hodge of Knoxville, TN; and other family members. His wife of 54 years, Wynn Leach Lloyd, and sister, Dorothy Wade, predecease him.