John J. Lloyd (1922-2014, age 92) was born in Dearborn, Michigan. In the mid 1920s his parents made a caravan across country with uncles and aunts to a better life out west. The Lloyd family settled in Ramona, California where John assisted his parents in running the local mercantile store and in the day-to-day operation of a turkey ranch. The Lloyd family moved to Culver City where John's father and uncle obtained jobs in the movie industry at the MGM Film Studios. As a teen John J. learned about the mechanics of flight while washing airplanes for a nickel a plane at the old Culver City airfield. During World War II John J. served in the Navy and put this background to good use. Stationed at Norman, Oklahoma, John J. instructed Navy airmen on the mechanics of aircraft and theory of flight. After the war, John attended and graduated from the Chouinard Art Institute; the art school located in the urban Westlake neighborhood, adjacent to MacArther Park, in the mid-town neighborhood of Los Angeles. John met his wife of 54 years, June, when he came upon her selling gladiolus and honey by the side of the road in Topanga Canyon. John and June married and settled, raising their family in Woodland Hills, California. John's strong work ethic, reputation, and dedication to his family and film craft kept him steadily employed in the film and television entertainment industry for close to fifty years.
