The Asbury Family · Generations of Service
A Legacy
A Legacy
of Service
President John F. Kennedy, escorted by Cadet Lloyd T. Asbury · Army–Navy Game, Philadelphia
President John F. Kennedy, escorted by Cadet Lloyd T. Asbury · Army–Navy Game, Philadelphia
“Our life is what our thoughts make it.”A favorite saying of Lloyd T. Asbury · 1940–2023
My father, Lloyd Thomas Asbury, graduated from West Point in 1963 as the number-one military graduate of his class. His First Class (senior) year he was the “King of Beast” — the cadet who ran Beast Barracks — a role remembered in The Long Gray Line, which describes the King of Beast without ever naming him. Chosen by his classmates for the honor, he escorted President John F. Kennedy onto the field at the Army–Navy Game, the entire Corps of Cadets at attention behind them.
My father told me that President Kennedy, taken with this photograph, promised to sign it for him. He was assassinated before he ever had the chance — and so this historic photograph remains, to this day, unsigned.
He later returned to West Point as a professor of French — which is where I was born and lived for more than three years while he taught — and served as an instructor at the Army's Airborne and Ranger school, training the Rangers who came after him.
He became a genuine war hero, serving two tours in Vietnam and in Cambodia, and was awarded the Purple Heart, the Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, and numerous other decorations. He rose to the rank of major within seven years of graduating West Point.
Ranked first in military aptitude and selected among the cadet leaders of his class, Lloyd stood at the front of the Long Gray Line. Neither of his parents had schooling beyond the third grade — yet they founded the West Point Parents' Club of Michigan, and he prized education his whole life, earned a master's degree in French in Paris, and taught at the Academy that made him.
Number-one military graduate of his class. Major within seven years of commissioning. Decorated combat veteran of Vietnam and Cambodia. Airborne. Army Ranger. West Point faculty. Later, a practicing attorney — the first lawyer in the family.
My uncle Larry — my father’s older brother — entered West Point out of Cranbrook Schools in Michigan and graduated with the Class of 1958, five years ahead of my dad. At the Academy he skated right wing and center on one of the finest hockey teams in West Point history: a 15–4–1 squad coached by Jack Riley, who two years later would coach the United States to Olympic gold. In the storied rivalry game against the Royal Military College of Canada, it was Larry’s shot that produced the rebound his teammate Pete Dawkins — that season’s Heisman Trophy winner — buried for the opening goal. At West Point he earned his stars as a Distinguished Cadet — a “star man,” ranked in the top five percent of his class academically.
Commissioned into the United States Air Force, Larry spent more than a decade at the height of the Cold War as an Electronic Warfare Officer flying aboard B-52 bombers, rising to the rank of Captain. He came home to coach youth hockey, build a career, and raise a family that remembers him as fiercely independent, dependable, generous, kind, and thoughtful. He passed away on September 4, 2026, at eighty-nine.
Cullum No. 21792. Well done; be thou at peace.
I grew up on their example. My father inspired me to pursue West Point, and I was honored to receive a congressional appointment to the Academy. My path ultimately led me instead to an Ivy League education at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania — and then to service of my own, as a veteran of the United States Army.
Duty. Integrity. Discipline. Putting others before yourself. Those are the values my family lived — and they're the values I bring to every client I represent. When you trust me with your business, your estate, or your family's future, you're working with someone raised to treat that responsibility as a matter of honor.
That is also why Asbury Law offers estate planning built specifically for veterans. Estate planning for veterans →
Protecting what you've built and the people you love isn't just my profession. It's a legacy of service I'm proud to carry forward.
Thomas Asbury · Asbury Law · Jacksonville, Florida