Lloyd was born on November 23, 1886 on a farm near Louisiana, Missouri, United States, the son of Clarence M. Stark and Lilly Crow. His great-grandfather had founded Stark Brothers Nurseries and Orchards Company in 1816; it became the largest nursery in the United States.
After completing high school, Stark prepared for a naval career, graduating from the United States Naval Academy in 1908.
In the next years he served in Turkish and South American waters, but resigned from the Navy in 1912 to become vicepresident and general manager, and later chairman of the board, of Stark Brothers Nurseries. He maintained a connection with the family business for the rest of his life. During his work at the nursery his triumph was the discovery of what became the Stark Golden Delicious apple.
One day a package of apples arrived from Odessa, West Virginia, and Stark was the first to sample them. "That's a new apple!" he exclaimed excitedly. He sent his brother Paul to find the tree, which was growing out of a mountainside; the Starks bought it for $5, 000. During World War I, Stark served with the 315th Field Artillery Regiment, attached to the Eightieth Division, and took part in the battles of St. Mihiel and the Meuse-Argonne.
He was discharged in June 1919 with the rank of major.
Because of his connection with the nursery he participated in civic projects, advocating the construction of a bridge across the Mississippi River at Louisiana, Missouri, joining Missouri and Illinois. In 1928 he became chairman of a statewide Citizens' Road Bond Committee, which obtained a $75 million bond issue for farm-to-market roads. There followed his single venture into elective office, his 1937-1941 term as Missouri's governor.
At the outset Stark sought Pendergast's support for the gubernatorial race and used Truman, who was Pendergast's protege, to advance his cause. Pendergast decided to support Stark as a compromise candidate against a possible nominee by the state's senior senator, Bennett Champ Clark. The latter was from St. Louis, and there long had been a rivalry between the state's two metropolises for control of the statehouse in Jefferson City.
The election of Stark in 1936 was allegedly assisted by his obtaining of 50, 000-60, 000 ghost votes in Kansas City. Upon his election Stark turned against his benefactors in the Pendergast machine. Part of his program as governor was unexceptionable, such as his effort to persuade the Navy to name a new battleship the Missouri.
Open warfare erupted with Pendergast, who it was discovered had used O'Malley to extract a massive bribe from several dozen fire insurance companies doing business within the state. Governor Stark pushed through a bill for state control of Kansas City's police department and ousted the Pendergast prosecuting attorney of Jackson County (which includes much of Kansas City), and appointed a bitter Pendergast enemy.
He set up permanent registration laws for St. Louis and Kansas City and purged the rolls of ghost voters. In the course of this veritable earthquake within Missouri's Democratic party, Pendergast was convicted of tax evasion and sent to Leavenworth prison. At this juncture Governor Stark overreached himself. Because the Missouri constitution allowed a governor only a single term, he aspired to the Senate seat of Truman, who was up for reelection in 1940.
He persuaded President Franklin D. Roosevelt to offer Senator Truman a lifetime federal post if the senator would remove himself from the primary. When Truman refused the offer, instructing Roosevelt's press secretary, Stephen T. Early, to tell the president to "go to hell, " Roosevelt instructed the state's WPA director to exert pressure through the agency's rolls to gain votes for Stark in the senatorial primary. At the same time Roosevelt spoke with Stark about the secretaryship of the Navy, then vacant, and avowed that he was considering the governor for nomination for the vice-presidency on his forthcoming third-term ticket. But Stark's national ambitions hurt his Senate campaign.
Word got out that he was collecting money from state employees, requiring donations of anyone who made more than $60 per month. The governor was seen as taking too much credit for the removal of Pendergast, which prompted the U. S. district attorney in Kansas City who had prosecuted Pendergast, Maurice M. Milligan, to enter the Senate race, dividing the "good government" vote. To the disgust of Missourians, Stark campaigned around the state accompanied by a retinue of uniformed Missouri colonels, and required his chauffeur to salute him.
He lost the primary to Senator Truman by nearly 8, 000 votes. The senator quipped that he had sent Stark back to the nursery. Stark retired from governorship, bitter about his loss. Completely finished with politics, save for occasional speeches on behalf of candidates for national and state offices, he returned to the nursery business and raising prizewinning saddlehorses, Hereford cattle, hogs, and sheep.
Stark died in St. Louis.
Lloyd Crow Stark sponsored a social security bill, grouping the administration of old-age pensions, direct relief, and a program for dependent children. He created an unemployment compensation commission; established a cancer hospital in Columbia, the first state-supported institution of its kind in the country; arranged for construction of a state office building across from the capitol; sponsored a driver's license law; and expanded the state's system for parole of prisoners. But he also moved against the Pendergast machine, first by sponsoring appointment of an anti-Pendergast judge to the state supreme court, then by dismissing the state insurance superintendent, R. Emmet O'Malley.
He was a Democrat. Stark's governorship marked a most eventful period in the political history of Missouri, which saw a realignment of the state Democratic party, breaking the power of the boss of Kansas City's political machine, Thomas J. Pendergast, and very nearly ending the career of the state's Democratic junior senator, Harry S Truman.
He supported the election of Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956, and Richard M. Nixon in 1960 and 1968, although continuing to vote Democratic in state elections.
Stark married Margaret P. Stickney on November 11, 1908; they had two children before she died in 1930. On November 23, 1931, he married Katherine L. Perkins; they also had two children.
