Don Sapatkin, Mr. Lloyd's former editor in the Weekend section, said that he had continued to work even as his eyesight declined due to glaucoma.
"He was really committed to his work," Sapatkin said. "Unless his health was so bad that he just couldn't write, he would bang out a column."
Colleagues remembered Mr. Lloyd, who lived in the Bella Vista section of South Philadelphia, as a gentle, unassuming man.
"I always found a certain irony in the fact that a man so nonjudgmental could function so well as a critic," said Al Haas, The Inquirer's automotive writer and a friend of Mr. Lloyd's for 32 years.
At various times, Mr. Lloyd served as the paper's jazz writer and its popular-music writer. During an early stint as a television writer in Atlanta in the 1960s, he incurred the wrath of fans by panning an early appearance of the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show.
His widow recalled that the popular-music job was a particular favorite. "In the '70s and the '80s, he absolutely loved it," she said. "Jack liked writing, and he liked features and entertainment writing because he thought he could have some fun with it."
In the course of three decades covering the popular, not to say gaudy, end of culture, Mr. Lloyd wrote about everyone from the world-famous to the extremely obscure.
He generally kept it light.
Here's what he wrote about actor-turned-singer Paul Sorvino when Sorvino appeared in Atlantic City in 1998:
"A typical day for New Yorker Paul Sorvino: After rising and dealing with the usual morning preliminaries, he sits down at the piano and plays an hour or so. Then he sings, limbering the vocal cords. Then he goes into his artist mode and sketches. At this point he may be sufficiently inspired to write some poetry."
And here is how he introduced the appearance of a geriatric Kingston Trio in Atlantic City in 1997:
"Poor old Tom Dooley had no way of knowing that nearly 100 years after he was hanged for his misdeeds in the 1860s a large part of the nation would be humming the little ditty he forlornly wrote in prison while awaiting the inevitable end."
Micki Young recalled that when Frank Sinatra released his comeback album in the 1970s, Mr. Lloyd gave it such a nice write-up that the entertainer asked to meet with him when he visited the area. This was viewed as somewhat unusual given Sinatra's stormy history with the press.
"He was an excellent reporter who wrote the way he lived - with intelligence, kindness, a sense of humor and a gentle touch," Haas said. "I admired Jack as a writer. I admired him even more as a human being."
William Jackson Lloyd (he was called Jack, and that was how his byline read) was born in Philadelphia and graduated from high school in Reading. He began his journalism career as a copy boy at the Daily News and subsequently held jobs at the Northeast Times, the Atlanta Journal, and the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin before coming to The Inquirer in 1966. His wife said he held an editing job at the Bulletin but left it because what he really enjoyed was writing.
In addition to his wife, Mr. Lloyd is survived by two children from his first marriage, Susan and Timothy, and a brother, Barry.
A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. tomorrow at St. Stanislaus Church, 242 Fitzwater St. in Queen Village.
Memorial donations should be made to the Glaucoma Service Foundation, in care of Wills Eye Hospital, 900 Walnut St., Philadelphia 19109.
Frederick Cusick's e-mail address is fcusick@phillynews.com
