Colonel Lloyd J. Matthews, Usa Ret.

Colonel Lloyd J. Matthews, USA Ret., died in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on Monday, September 19, 2016 after a brief illness at the age of 86. He was born on November 25, 1929, in Clinton, Oklahoma. His father was Lloyd Jerald Matthews, a meat market proprietor and later an Oklahoma State Trooper; his mother was lola Cork Matthews, a homemaker. Educated in public schools in Clinton and later Purcell, he attended Southwestern Institute of Technology in
Weatherford, Oklahoma, for two years, and National University Law School in Washington, DC, for a semester prior to entering the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, in 1950. Graduating in 1954 with a B.S. degree, he was commissioned as second lieutenant of infantry and attended ranger and airborne schools, subsequently serving at such posts as Ft.Carson, Colorado, and Ft. Ord, California, and overseas in Germany and South Vietnam. During these assignments he commanded all echelons from platoon to battalion, and as a paratrooper made 17 jumps. Between duty tours, he attended the Armed Forces Staff College at Norfolk, Virginia, and the Army War College at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, and earned an M.A. degree from Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. He served three tours on the Military Academy staff and faculty,
ascending from an instructor in the Department of English to the Academy Associate Dean. During his Vietnam War tour in 1964-65, he served initially as a militia advisor in Tay Ninh Province near the Cambodian border, and later in Saigon as Senior Aide-de-camp to General William C. Westmoreland, commander of all U.S. forces in Vietnam.
Following retirement from the Army in 1984, Colonel Matthews served as a civilian project manager in Saudi Arabia and Turkey, and then resumed his former long-time position as editor of Parameters: The U.S. Army War College Quarterly at Carlisle Barracks. During a writing career pursued concurrently with his military career, he published well over a hundred
monographs, editions, articles, reviews, and features, mainly on military and literary themes.
His culminating work, taking 33 years to write, is titled General Henry Lockwood of Delaware: Shipmate of Melville, Co-builder of the Naval Academy, Civil War Commander, co-published by the University of Delaware Press and Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group in 2014. Additionally, he was editor of three major Department of Defense Independent Panel Reports
chaired by James Schlesinger: DoD Detention Operations at Abu Ghraib (August 2004); U.S. Air
Force Nuclear Weapons Management (August 2008); and DoD Nuclear Mission (December 2008).
Colonel Matthews attended the Second Presbyterian Church in Carlisle. He is survived by his beloved wife of 20 years Phyllis Matthews; son Lloyd J. "Matt" Matthews; daughter Leslie Matthews; step-daughters Amy Runyon (and husband Rob), Jennifer Thomas, and Julia Stouffer; sisters Dixie Burch and Kay Suhre (and husband Dow); brother Edward Matthews; and six grandchildren. He was buried at the U.S. Military Academy Cemetery at West Point, New York, after a private graveside ceremony.
In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to the local charity of your choice.
Hoffman Funeral Home & Crematory, 2020 W. Trindle Road, Carlisle, PA is handling the arrangements. To sign the guestbook, please visit www.HoffmanFH.com