Restaurateur had popular menu

10/1/2005

NORTH BALTIMORE, Ohio - Thomas Lloyd, 80, who owned a popular restaurant here, died Thursday in St. Vincent Mercy Medical Center.

He had a heart attack while recovering from abdominal surgery, his wife, Mary, said.

Mr. Lloyd worked for Montgomery Ward in Fort Wayne, Ind., when he and his wife had a chance about 1972 to buy her brother's North Baltimore restaurant. Fort Wayne never seemed like home, she said.

"I said, 'Honey, why don't we just buy it? We can handle it,'●" his wife said. "At the time, North Baltimore was real successful. There wasn't an empty store downtown."

The couple later bought the building next door and expanded their dining room.

Lloyd's Restaurant attracted crowds, some of whom traveled 50 miles to sample Mrs. Lloyd's home-style cooking. Mr. Lloyd ran the grill and deep fryer.

"It was an old-fashioned, family-style restaurant, and that's what the people liked," she said.

An electrical fire in 1981 destroyed the building. The couple, who lived above the restaurant, lost everything except their car and the nightclothes they were wearing. The Lloyds did not rebuild. Instead, he was a custodian for about a decade in the North Baltimore public schools. Later, they both worked at a small factory in Findlay, retiring in 2000.

Mr. Lloyd was a graduate of North Baltimore High School and an Army Air Corps veteran of World War II. He later delivered ice cream for a Findlay dairy, worked in a drug store, and managed an automotive and hardware store in Findlay.

He was a member of American Legion Post 539, North Baltimore.

Surviving are his wife, Mary, whom he married Aug. 15, 1947; sons, Thomas, Jr., and Steven; brothers, William and Gerald Lloyd; sister, Bonnie Waaland; five grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren.

Services will be at 10 a.m. Monday in Smith-Crates Mortuary, North Baltimore, where the body will be after 2 p.m. tomorrow.

The family suggests tributes to Good Shepherd United Methodist Church, North Baltimore, of which he was a member, or the American Heart Association.