John Bailey Lloyd was born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and had been on Long Beach Island since 1942, when he was ten years old—in time to see old landmarks like the boardwalk, the Engleside Hotel and the vast emptiness of the Island as it once was. After serving in the Coast Guard, he spent nearly every summer here; in 1977 he and his wife Jeanette, and their two sons became permanent residents in the family's Beach Haven summer home, a three-story Victorian built in 1879. A graduate of Mount St. Mary's College in Emmitsburg, Maryland, Mr. Lloyd held a Master's Degree in English from the University of Michigan and a Master's in library science from Rutgers University. He worked as a reference librarian in the Ocean County Library system. Mr. Lloyd was known as "Long Beach Island's historian" for his books, his weekly summer talks at the historical museum in Beach Haven and for his historical newspaper articles.