LOUD, IRA BENJAMIN (1910-1984). Ira B. Loud, black Methodist minister, was born on April 3, 1910, in Somerville, Texas, the son of Rev. John W. and Lucinda (Bradley) Loud. He attended Prairie View Normal and Industrial College, where he met and married Marie M. Moore. In 1933 he entered the Methodist ministry and was sent to Cogswell Chapel Methodist Church in Fort Worth, a church with only five members and no building. He was successful in establishing a congregation there and built a meetinghouse. He subsequently served churches in Calvert and Kingsville and was district superintendent in San Antonio. In 1948 he was assigned to St. Paul Methodist Church, Dallas, where he served as pastor for thirty-two years. He was publisher of the West Texas Conference paper (1940-80), TV preacher on KDFW (1970-84), delegate to many Methodist jurisdictional and general conferences, member of several denominational boards, and a trustee of Huston-Tillotson College, Austin, and of Gulfside Methodist Assembly in Mississippi. In addition to being a regent of Texas Southern University, Houston, Loud contributed his time to such agencies as the Dallas Council on Alcoholism, Goals for Dallas, the Moorland Branch of the YMCA, the Dallas Rehabilitation and Screening Committee, Thanksgiving Square of Dallas, and others. He retired in 1980, died in 1984, and was buried in Fort Worth.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Elmer T. Clark and T. A. Stafford, eds., Who's Who in Methodism (Chicago: Marquis, 1952).

Walter N. Vernon