‘An unfathomable tragedy.’ Lloyd Young, Globe photo editor and avid athlete, dies at 57.
Each day Lloyd Young examined thousands of images as the photo editor for the front page of The Boston Globe, playing a key role in choosing the first pictures readers see in print and online.
He had begun his career shooting photos for his high school yearbook and college newspaper, though, and always remembered what a simple slice-of-life picture means for those who aren’t famous or immersed in a startling news event. Away from work, he photographed his sons’ high school sports events and kept doing so after they graduated because he knew photos are treasured memories that linger for years on everything from refrigerators to social media pages.
“To this day, I don’t know how many people have his pictures,” said his wife, Britt, who added that for Mr. Young, a photo was more than just a fraction of a second, frozen in a frame.
“He always said his main objective was to be able to give something to someone that they could cherish forever,” she said. “For most people who are into photography, there’s a deeper passion, and he had that deeper passion for sure.”
Mr. Young, whose vigorous athletic pursuits included long-distance bicycling events in the Midwest, the East Coast, and France, was 57 when he died in Illinois on Aug. 23 while participating in a lowkey triathlon he and his friends held annually to honor the memory of a cyclist he had known since boyhood.
The county coroner told news organizations that a car struck Mr. Young while he was bicycling along a rural McLean County road, and that an investigation is continuing.
Though he died riding past cornfields along roads he had bicycled since his early teens in Bloomington-Normal, Ill., Mr. Young had tested his endurance in the Lake Placid, N.Y., ironman triathlon, the New York City Marathon, and a grueling bicycling event known as Paris-Brest-Paris —745 miles to and from an ocean port city in France, which he completed in just over 80 hours in 1999.
Not everyone in the Globe newsroom knew the extent of Mr. Young’s athletic accomplishments. He logged more than 100,000 bicycling miles alone, his family and friends estimated.
At work, colleagues who are now grieving his absence valued his unerring professionalism.
“Losing Lloyd is an unfathomable tragedy for all who knew him,” said Bill Greene, the Globe’s director of photography. “He was a rock in the department. Talented, thoughtful, and reliable. He will be missed.”
Mr. Young often could be found staring intently at a computer screen at the Globe, meticulously choosing images that captured memorably expressive moments. Over the course of his career, he reviewed hundreds of thousands of photos.
“He was so good at it,” said Leanne Burden Seidel, a Globe photo editor. “He believed in the storytelling power of photography, and he really held everybody to very high standards. He was always striving for excellence. He believed in making the Globe better each day.”
When Mr. Young wasn’t tethered to his desk, however, he tended to keep moving.
“You just feed off that energy,” said Ed Matesevac of Superior, Colo., a friend since college who had joined him bicycling.
“Lloyd knew, without having to speak the words, what it was like to try with everything you have to accomplish something,” he said of Mr. Young’s intense approach to work and athletic competition, to family and friendship.
Kalvin McGhee, who grew up across a cornfield in Normal from Mr. Young and now lives in Decatur, Ill., recalled times when Mr. Young would talk “about getting up at 3 in the morning, going on a practice ride, and then working a full day.”
He joined Mr. Young for 100-mile rides and once ran a marathon with him. “I’m wiped out afterwards,” McGhee said.
Not Mr. Young. After the marathon, “he said, ‘Alright, let’s go mini-golfing. Gotta keep moving your legs,’ ” McGhee recalled, laughing as he added: “He was a great friend to have around if you didn’t want to sit still.”
Lloyd Ross Young was born on June 11, 1968, and grew up in Bloomington-Normal, adjacent Illinois cities that residents speak of in the same breath.
His mother, Lois Zimmerman Young, is a retired early childhood education teacher. His father, Gary Young, who died in 2022, was an electronic service technician in Bloomington.
Mr. Young was on the swimming team and ran cross-country at Normal Community High School.
He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in agricultural communications from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he played in the marching band’s brass section and was a photographer for The Daily Illini student newspaper.
He then worked for the Morning Journal in Lorain, Ohio, and his photo assignments included Cleveland’s professional sports teams, his wife said.
Then Mr. Young’s older sister, A’lory Young Borstad, died young of cancer, and he accepted a job at The Pantagraph, his hometown newspaper in Bloomington-Normal, where he had interned — partly to be closer to his parents.
One night Pantagraph colleagues, without telling them, secretly set up Mr. Young and Britt Carlson on a date. She then oversaw the paper’s internet operation and now directs a nonprofit. It was snowing when they left the bar and Mr. Young immediately cleared off her car.
“I thought, ‘Hmm, this guy is different,’ ” she recalled. “I’ve told this story to my boys so they know how to treat girls.”
They married in 2001 and had two sons, Luke and Ben, who are now in college.
Mr. Young graduated in 2003 from Ohio University with a master’s in visual communications. He was a photo editor in Stuart, Fla., for the Treasure Coast Newspapers before joining the Globe’s staff in 2006.
His photo editing awards included recognition by the Best of Photojournalism Competition, sponsored by the National Press Photographers Association, and the Pictures of the Year International competition.
“Lloyd was a very talented photographer,” said Steve Warmowski of Oakbrook Terrace, Ill., a photographer colleague for their college newspaper. Even then, Warmowski added, “He was always searching for the truth – to show things with honesty.”
An inveterate concertgoer who was teaching himself to play guitar, Mr. Young earlier this year attended an AC/DC show — a bucket list band.
He was just as willing to sit in the audience with Britt for Mariah Carey’s Christmas concert last December. He wasn’t a fan, but Britt was, and that was all that mattered.
“Lloyd did things that were important to me and the boys,” said Britt, who added that “being a dad was the best thing he ever did.”
On Aug. 23, Britt’s birthday, Mr. Young was riding in the annual Carl McGhee Memorial Tri-Me — named for Kalvin’s father, who died in 1997 when a dog barreled into his bicycle, throwing him to the ground.
Mr. Young was leading the cycling leg of this year’s triathlon when a car struck him at an intersection by a cornfield.
“I got to hold his hand, whether he knew it or not,” said Kalvin, the first to reach him. “I got to talk to him a little bit.”
A celebration of Mr. Young’s life and work will be announced. His wife, sons, and mother are his immediate survivors.
Several years ago, Mr. Young jotted a few words on a blank piece of paper and attached it to the refrigerator with a magnet — four words of advice for his sons and anyone else:
Be kind
Be useful
Those two lines remain there for all to see, though he taught by example, too.
“I think he wished everybody could do that,” Britt said, “He was always trying to be kind and be useful.”
