Kansas City MO

Larry Cloyd

Larry Cloyd was born in Newton, Iowa, on March 14, 1948. He is the son of a chiropractor and a Bell telephone operator, Jesse and Louise Cloyd. He attended four and one half years of grade school in New Zealand before moving to Springfield, Missouri in 1958.

Larry graduated from Hillcrest High School in 1966 and married his wife, Barbara in 1967. They have two children, Dwayne Cloyd, of Smithville, Missouri, and Kimberly Yung of Princeton, Nebraska. Dwayne and Debi have two sons, Eli, age 12, and Luke, age 10. Kimberly and Melvin have a son and a daughter, Andrew, age 8, and Ashley, age 6.

Upon graduation, Larry worked for nearly five years at McDonnell Aircraft in St. Louis, Missouri as a cockpit electrician, wiring main instrument panels for F-4 Phantom jet fighters. During that time he was also on special assignment reworking the Blue Angel and the Thunderbird Phantoms. While at McDonnell Aircraft, he was a member of the International Association of Machinist Union (IAM).

After the Viet Nam war, Larry and his wife moved to Springfield, Missouri, where he began as a Carman Apprentice on November 23, 1970, on the Frisco Railroad and became a member of the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen (BRC). During his thirty-seven years on the railroad he worked every job a Carman could hold and held several Union offices. After the BN merger, he transferred to Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1988. He worked in Lincoln until May of 1991, at which time he transferred to North Kansas City, Missouri. After the ATSF merger, he was assigned to work in the Argentine Yards in Kansas City, Kansas. In 1997, he was elected Local Chairman for Lodge 6850 and served in that capacity until retiring from the BNSF in May 2007.

In November 2007 Larry became an employee of the C. Marshall Friedman Law Firm in the Kansas City office.