Harold Lloyd King

Harold Lloyd King was born August 5th, 1932 in Snowmack, Oklahoma to Enoch Walton King and Bertha May King. Harold was the oldest of 10 children, he grew up primarily in and around Tulsa, OK. His father Enoch was a concrete man and construction worker most of his life. During the great depression era, Harold’s father took many odd jobs to provide for his family, some of which included the whole family traveling to Texas to pick cotton bolls for money to buy groceries, and picking burlap sacks full of pecans to sell at the market. Harold spoke of a time when they had so many bags of pecans that were stored in a house they rented that they broke through the floor in the middle of the night waking up the whole family. When Harold was about 10 years old, His mother Bertha would make cream from a dairy cow they kept. It was Harold's responsibility twice a week to carry a 13-pound cream can to town 3 miles away to sell to the creamery, and then stop at the store to buy a pack of cigarettes for his dad before returning home. Farm life was tough and not his cup of tea so Harold left home at an early age.

At the age of 15, Harold joined the circus as a roustabout. The circus traveled by train in those days and the workers were given 2 meals a day of cabbage stew. To this day he can’t stand cabbage. Harold traveled with the circus for approximately 3 months but quickly grew tired of that life and left the circus in Louisiana to go back to Oklahoma. Harold then worked at a body shop for about a year to help repaint refurbished police cars. They had to fill about 20 holes in each car and then sand and paint them. He said the dealer bought 26 of the same model Ford sedan and it took almost a year to complete all that work. Shortly after working for the body shop, he went to work for Boeing Aviation where he helped build the wings for the B52 aircraft. He had to crawl inside of the wings and place a urethane sealer over every single rivet in the wings construction so that the fuel bladders would not rub through and rupture. After his job at Boeing Harold met and married Mae Few, she was only 15 at the time. He went to work for her father Othel “Doc” Few as a painter and continued to provide for his family as a home painter until his retirement.

Harold and Mae raised 4 children together...Harold Dean, Sherry Lynn, David Lloyd, and Thomas Lyle. In 1974 Harold married Jane Glass in Colorado Springs and gained his daughter Cathy. He and Jane lived happily together until she died in 2001.

Harold started a saw-sharpening business in the early 1980s and until recently had a large client base. Working full time as a painter and owning a saw shop as extra income, it's a wonder that he found time for his favorite hobbies. A few of these hobbies included being an avid fisherman and hunter, but his favorite thing to do was fish. He had probably fished every hole in Oklahoma in his early years with his little brother Max. Later he traveled throughout Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, Montana, New Mexico, Kansas, and Texas (to name a few) to pursue his love of fishing.

One of the King family traditions was their annual elk hunt in Colorado, this was a special time with 4 generations of Kings, an occasional out-of-state family member, and friends to be together for an entire week. Harold also loved taxidermy, furniture building, knife building, leatherwork, bowling, and just building or rebuilding anything and everything. No one could ever accuse Harold of idleness.

Harold is survived by 4 children, his sister Dottie, 12 grandchildren, 24 great-grandchildren, 3 great-great-grandchildren, and many nieces and nephews.

Harold Lloyd King passed away in Colorado Springs in the early morning of November 2, 2021, at the age of 89.

Funeral services will be held on November 13 at 1 pm at Memorial Gardens. Please join the family at Fargo's pizza following the service to celebrate this wonderful life.