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MEMORIAL ARTICLE
Published Assembly Jan '90
Lloyd Charles Kurowski No.15523 Class of 1946
Died 17 June 1958 in Wood Veterans Hospital, Wisconsin, aged
35 years. Interment: Pulaski, Wisconsin |
When Lloyd Kurowski came to West Point in the summer of 1943,
he had been studying civil engineering at the University of Wisconsin
where he played both football and basketball. To his classmates
in F-2 Company, Lloyd was a joke-teller and a man who took plebe
troubles as if life were always that way. He was a born optimist,
who spread confidence among us; he was a bit more mature, somewhat
wiser, more tolerant than most of us. Through our cadet years
we relied on his innate sense of responsibility, and we elected
him to the General Committee and were pleased when the authorities
made him a lieutenant.
Lloyd brought a rich tradition with him from Pulaski, Wisconsin,
where he was born on 22 April 1923 to Stephen and Emma Kurowski.
Through the Pulaski Public Schools, he developed into an outstanding
athlete and assumed positions of leadership, becoming president
of the student council in his senior year. The Catholic Church
became, and remained, an important factor in his cadet life and
later. He developed the habit of studying hard, and graduated
from the West Point three year course with a class standing of
237 of 875.
On a blind date in yearling year Lloyd met Betty Harris of
Lenoir, North Carolina, who was studying voice at the Juilliard
School of Music in New York. They were married after graduation
and we knew it was a special marriage. Son Stephen was born in
1947, daughter Jan in 1948, and Peter in 1953.
Commissioned in Artillery branch, Lloyd went to Fort Sill,
Oklahoma, and from there to Degerndorf and Erlangen, Germany,
where his reputation as a leader was widespread. He carried the
West Point heritage of Duty, Honor, and Country into his daily
work; he had the confidence and firmness that made soldiers admire
him, and the compassion and tolerance that befriended them.
The first indication that Lloyd's career would not have the
brilliance for which it seemed destined came in 1950 when a recurring
ailment was diagnosed as Hodgkin's disease. Nine months later
Lloyd and Betty retired to Pulaski where they built a home and
Lloyd started to work for the Hudson Sharp Machine Company and
for Dun and Bradstreet.
If a man is measured by his response to an awesome fate, Lloyd
walked with giants. The optimism and strength of character of
his cadet years never showed brighter. His sense of public responsibility
plunged him immediately into civic and youth affairs, and he
served on the Pulaski Village Board for two years. He pursued
his job energetically and attended closely to the financial future
of his family. He generated a spiritual power for the people
of his community. Although there were occasional relapses, he
generally enjoyed buoyant health. Finally, on 28 March 1958,
he became suddenly ill and died three months later. His magnificent
spirit had given him four more years than allotted him-years
in which to teach and inspire his children.
Lloyd Kurowski's children need heroes in their lives. They
had one, their father. Ordinary heroes have fathers to bolster
them; Lloyd Kurowski's courage and compassion, born in church,
and at West Point, flowed, aided from a great well within him,
still pours forth for those of us he left behind, those who share
a great pride in him.
Roger H. Nye, '46
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