Lloyd McK. Alston
Longtime educator was an active member of his fraternity, served as vice president of the Baltimore Urban League
Lloyd McK. Alston, a retired city public school assistant superintendent who later became vice president of the Baltimore Urban League, died Jan. 31 of respiratory failure at Gilchrist Hospice Care in Towson. He was 83.
“I knew him in the school system, and he was a very intelligent and knowledgeable man. He was humanistic — he cared about people,” said Judson B. Wood, who was also a Baltimore public school assistant superintendent and a longtime friend.
“We have also been fraternity brothers since 1970,” said Mr. Wood, a Randallstown resident.
“I knew him as an educator, socially, and we were in the same investment club. He was a very gentlemanly man and extremely polite.
The son of Hilliard Alston, a Bethlehem Steel Co. worker, and Obiedell Watson, a homemaker, Lloyd McKinley Alston was born and raised in East Baltimore and graduated in 1950 from Paul Laurence Dunbar High School. As a youngster he was “hardworking,” said his wife of 60 years, the former Josephine Locklear.
He delivered newspapers before school, swept floors in a grocery store and plucked chickens — a job for which he was paid five cents.
In 1954, he received a bachelor's degree in business education from what is now Morgan State University, where he was a member of the Pi Chapter of Omega Psi Phi.
Active in the Reserve Officers Training Corps while in college, Mr. Alston was commissioned an Army lieutenant after graduating from Morgan, and taught recruits at Fort Jackson, S.C., for two years before being discharged in 1956.
In 1957, he began his career with city public schools. He joined the faculty of Carver Vocational-Technical High School, teaching business education. He was later promoted to assistant principal.
Mr. Alston was then named special assistant to the principal at Mergenthaler Vocational-Technical High School, and the next year was named assistant principal, then acting principal.
He served as the school's principal from 1969 to 1976.
“Lloyd improved the discipline and decorum at Mervo to a commendable degree,” wrote his wife in a biographical sketch. She was also an educator, teaching business for 11 years at Perry Hall High School.
“During the civil rights era, he bridged racial tensions among his teaching staff. He directed the militant sprit of students into progressive channels, and guided Mervo successfully through its second accreditation,” she wrote.
Mr. Alston then served as assistant superintendent of three city public school divisions: personnel, adult and community education, and vocational education.
While working for the city public schools, he earned a master's degree in business from American University and did additional studies at what is now Loyola University Maryland.
After retiring in 1984, he served as vice president of the Baltimore Urban League until 1993, when he returned to Morgan State as a student counselor.
He was an active member of Pi Omega, the graduate chapter of Omega Psi Phi, where he served on the Talent Hunt, Achievement Week, Founder's Day, Scholarship and Mardi Gras committees.
For 38 years, Mr. Alston was a member of The Club of Baltimore, which met monthly to discuss the stock market and make investments.
“He was one of our leaders and always very calm. He'd say a prayer in that wonderful baritone voice of his to put us in focus,” Mr. Wood said. “He was also a wonderful writer.”
Mr. Alston was baptized at Faith Baptist Church on North Bond Street, where he became a Sunday school teacher in 1960 and was appointed a deacon in 1981.
“Lloyd was a very religious man, and he had the ability to pray — and say prayers that any denomination would accept. He had a knack when it came to speaking to God,” Mr. Wood said.
Mr. Alston had been a leader of Boy Scout Troop 603, founded at Northwood-Appold United Methodist Church, where his three sons were members. He participated in monthly camping trips, no matter the weather, family members said, and manned the troop's annual Christmas tree lot.
Mr. Alston enjoyed taking his family on annual vacations in the family station wagon, which he used to pull a tent trailer that slept eight.
For a decade, he was a volunteer with the Meals on Wheels of Central Maryland operation based at Faith Presbyterian Church.
“He lived life based on the principles of manhood, scholarship, perseverance and uplift,” Mr. Wood said. “He was a well-rounded man.”
Funeral services will be held at 11 a.m. Tuesday at Faith Baptist Church, 833 N. Bond St.
PREVIOUS ARTICLE
